February 2016

04 Feb 16

Software coder Eric Suh writes, in a piece entitled, Writing code and prose:

One of the most important qualities for effective programming in large codebases is good writing ability—not writing code, but writing prose for other humans.
 
Undoubtedly, this is not a surprise to long-time industry veterans (after all, we don't often program in machine code anymore), but it's a quality I often find is overlooked by engineers that arrive straight out of college. Those that I see write the cleanest, most maintainable code are those who write prose well, whether in documentation, in emails, or in their everyday lives.
 
Many aphorisms about writing style translate fairly well to coding. Consider the following selection of principles from The Elements of Style by Strunk and White: