Incorrect. My professors trashed students reports (that groups had spent literally 800+ man hours on) because they were all awfully written. Writing well is incredibly hard, especially on technical topics.
Diagrams for many engineering topics is worthless since diagrams are unable to actually express complex topics very well.
I’ve had a relatively short career, but he seems to be correct so far.
Diagramming is interesting because it relies heavily on writing, half of a diagram are words. You can slap on as many triangles, circles, and lines as you want to communicate your idea but if you do not utilize the right words it's a worthless diagram.
An HTTP request-response diagram is a great example of this. You can overcomplicate it with both symbols and text, you can also miss crucial points and give people the wrong idea entirely.
So let it encourage you to pick up drawing/diagramming tools, and improve your writing even further. Take already made diagrams, how would you improve them? If someone asked for clarity on how to expand on that diagram (ie: how would an ISP fit into the HTTP diagram), what would that look like and what symbols and text would you use?
Another fun challenge to improve on writing is how would you explain (topic) to someone who is blind? It's more difficult than you think as we tend to rely so heavily on visual information, but it's a fantastic way to improve your skills by highlighting weak points in cross-type information.
If I had a dollar for every time someone drew a diagram that expressed their thought, but didn’t explain all the hidden assumptions and omissions that clear writing would flush out, I would be a poor man since they wouldn’t need me to review their work.
I can't fathom how you've arrived at this conclusion. Like everything in life, the only way you can know for certain if something is true or not is by doing it many times over and then seek feedback.
Until one writes and then shows their writing to many many readers, it is impossible to make such claim.
Dang you and I have complete opposite worldviews on this.
This is the complete opposite of my personal experience. (I do agree with your point about the value of diagramming. But I see it more as a subset of the foundation of writing: clearly expressing thoughts in an easily readable medium
clearly not
give the number
of enginers i see
write like this
all the time
message choke full
of typso
---
All I can figure is that their laptop didn't come with the red squiggle underlining feature, much akin to how some cars on the road very clearly didn't come with a turn signal.
It’s a vector graphics tool - and it’s in a good sweet spot. Easy to make simple and useful diagrams - export them as transparent PNGs and start incorporating them into documents, presentations.