When will people who work in information technology use the benefits of clear easy to follow instructions?
In my undergraduate (computing) course at university, technical writing skill earned a lot of marks and a lot of emphasis was put on it. However, not everyone can do it. Techies are good at techie stuff, that’s why they work in technical jobs. They never claimed to be good at writing. But you’re right in that there is this tension between what a techie can produce and what of that product he can get people to understand and use. The fact is that computing is a massively complicated and technical field that requires a well-trained engineering and scientific mindset to get into and a lot of knowledge to understand. Yet computing products are made for the masses, so they have to have a level of understandability to be useful at all. I think that it’s just not easy when, as a techie, you are used to dealing with industry concepts and terminology every day, to then understand the viewpoint of a layperson. There isn’t an easy solution and you’re right for pointing it out, but a lot of money
