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Comment by caf | Hacker News Reader

I don't believe your paraphrase of the line you quoted from the author is accurate.

His own words, strictly read, imply that:

  - Shaw is a writer;
  - The author is not a writer;
  - The author is an engineer.

It doesn't imply anything either way about Shaw being an engineer.

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The full quote is "Let me start by saying that unlike Mr. Shaw, I am not a writer. I'm an engineer. Thus, this will be written from that perspective."

By implication, Zed's book is not written from the POV of an engineer (otherwise why would this be worth noting in any way shape or form? The topic under discussion is already software engineering).

That is not the implication that I took from it; as I read it, this is an apology of sorts that the critique is not informed by the perspective of a writer.

I read it as a snarky smackdown of Zed as "a writer and not a software engineer".

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