On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

First you write code. You’re handed a task and, using the languages of machines, you try to convey to the machines what they need to do.

Then you realize you’re conveying your thoughts through machine language not only to machines but to people too: your colleagues, and your own future self.

But the most interesting part starts when you have to convey your thoughts in human language to other people. Ideas, proposals, design docs, tasks for the team, strategies, promo packets, discussions on Slack or in person — the success of your projects depends less and less on how well you communicate with machines, and more and more on how well you communicate with people.

A separate joke, of course, is that writing code now also takes being able to communicate with the machine in human language — it doesn’t matter which programming languages you know if you can explain to Claude Code in English what you need.

✅ 45 minutes — is this an audiobook or already a podcast?

🅱️ The overall concept is interesting, but I’d have liked more concrete tips and tricks.