
Please learn to write - filament
http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2012/05/16/please_learn_to_write.html
======
edw519
Source of my problems:

    
    
      design issues               5%
      architecture constraints    5%
      language shortcomings       1%
      mental blocks               5%
      personal time management    4%
      personal energy             5%
      communication with others  75%
    

I waste more time just trying to figure out what others are trying to say,
sometimes in person and by voice, but mostly in writing. For most emails, I
have to click "reply" or call back simply because what you're trying to tell
me is so unclear. I think the last time I received a written specification I
could actually work from was in 2002.

This isn't a problem of education, country of origin, or any other
demographic: almost everyone sucks at writing. It's a real problem.

I suppose the best antidote to poor writing is more writing, especially on-
line. Don't be bashful because as OP says, your readers won't be.

Thanks OP for the one "please" post this week that _everyone_ can benefit
from. (Did I just end that sentence with a preposition? Need more practice.)

~~~
MartinCron
_Did I just end that sentence with a preposition?_

A preposition is a perfectly acceptable thing to end a sentence with.
Seriously. If you find yourself re-writing it as "with which to end a
sentence" you're going to come across as stilted and awkward.

~~~
thisishugo
Unless writing for a scientific journal, or some other such formal setting,
your goal of clear communication will be best served by using a casual,
conversational style that resonates as closely as possible with how you would
talk to your reader in person.

That means prepositions are very much something you can end a sentence with.
And you can start one with a conjunctive too, if it feels right. The rules of
grammar are more like the pirate code than an ISO standard - they're more what
you might call guidelines, really.

~~~
mikebike
I think we'd be better served using such styles in scientific journals more
often.

As an example, here's a wonderfully written article by the late statistician,
Jacob Cohen: <http://www.ics.uci.edu/~sternh/courses/210/cohen94_pval.pdf>

~~~
disgruntledphd2
Just to note, although he wrote far more on statistics, he was a psychologist
born and bred.

------
MartinCron
I'm (primarily) a coder and I've started writing a short weekly newsletter for
the users of the application I'm supporting and extending. The basic format is
"what happened this week" and "what may happen next week" as well as a "please
communicate with us if you have concerns or ideas". I'm now 14 weeks into this
experiment, and I've found a things worth sharing.

1\. Explaining to your entire user base what you're up to helps you focus your
efforts on meaningful demonstrable progress instead of gold-plating.

2\. It has been said a hundred times before, but the way to get better at
writing is to write.

3\. People prefer incremental changes over disruptive redesigns, especially if
they are given a heads-up before the incremental changes happen.

4\. People care about the quality of writing. I've gotten a bunch of comments
about how they actually enjoy reading the newsletter. That was totally
unexpected.

5\. Tone matters. I've found a good conversational tone that incorporates just
a touch of humor and self-deprecation without being too casual. My userbase is
non-technical, so I can't leak jargon on them. Metaphors help.

6\. Cadence matters. Writing a weekly update is much easier than writing an
update "just whenever".

7\. Having an editor helps. I generally write the entire message, but pass it
along to comrade to send it out to see if anything is confusing, I've made any
typos, or forgot to finish one of my sentenc

~~~
samspot
This advice sounds fantastic, and I've bookmarked it for reference. Thank you
for sharing!

~~~
MartinCron
I'm glad you like it. I just remembered another thing I've learned from the
experience and added it (#7 - have an editor)

------
jkeel
One of the best pieces of advice I received for my career was from my
university's computer science counselor.

I asked him what I needed to do/study to be better than other programmers. I
started asking, "should I study C, Java (it had just come out), etc. He said
study something to improve your communication. He said in the real world
business just look at you as a computer person. They don't know the difference
between a programmer, network engineer, PC support person, etc.

He said anyone can code and the ones that are way better will not be
recognized enough by management to make a difference in their careers. Since
computer people are sort of known as introverts, just being able to speak well
and communicate with everyone will go further than being the expert at
language X.

------
VengefulCynic
Communication skill is a proxy for critical thinking skill - if you can't
communicate effectively, your critical thinking skill is either going to be
undervalued or underutilized.

For the lack of understanding, communication inputs are misinterpreted,
ignored or incorrectly responded to. For the lack of clarity, precision and
understandability, communication outputs suffer the same fate. And, as we've
learned in networking, inefficiencies in a system (such as the engineer whose
emails make no sense, when he/she bothers to reply at all) get routed around.

------
hkmurakami
Everyone should learn to code. Everyone should learn to write. But we
shouldn't necessarily aspire to become professionals in either.

English and Code are tools that are used by others to form the world around
us. To understand these tools is to understand this world. To not understand
these tools is to be at the mercy of the world's creators.

Knowledge is power; it is both the power to attack and the power to defend.
Learn to write and learn to code, not to attack, but to defend yourself in
this world.

~~~
sitkack
knowledge is energy, being able to apply knowledge to a situation is power.

------
iuguy
Being able to write well appears to be a shockingly lacking skill in my
industry (pentesting and forensics). It's a really rare talent when you find
someone that is capable of writing a good report in appropriate plain business
English.

Having that skill is intensely valuable, as I'm sure it is in other areas of
IT. How big a role does being able to write well play in your part of the
world?

~~~
Duff
Good writers move up the organizational and/or salary ladder.

Good technicians or engineers who cannot communicate end up making the guy who
translates whatever they are doing to the customer or management look good.

~~~
knighthacker
True. Effective communication is just as important as writing good and
maintainable code in my opinion.

------
easp
I suppose I could get a blog post out of this, but I can't be bothered, so:

Please learn to use a phone to make a voice call.

I value effective written communication, but part of effective communication
is understanding your audience, and in many situations, you audience is only a
handful of people. In that case it is a much more efficient use of your time,
and theirs, to just have a conversation.

IRC or IM is a reasonable substitute, and a face-to-face conversation, if
practical, is even better.

(Writing this in a spare moment before talking to someone face-to-face. Last
night I spent the better part of an hour trying to figure out how to address
the issue over email before concluding that a short conversation would be more
effective)

------
chernevik
Many people are commenting that writing improves with practice, and that's
true, but it probably isn't enough. The 10,000 hours count only if they're
done well. I'm not a writer but here are some basics I've found helpful.

1\. Revise constantly. If you haven't revised it three times you almost surely
haven't done enough. You don't need an outline, but as you write new thoughts
will occur to you, previously open questions will be answered, opinions of
priorities will shift. Writing in the Rubber Duck school of programming to the
nth degree. All that you discover you already knew should be completely
reflected in the final document. This is a very painful thing, you can spend
hours on something and be "almost done" when you realize the key question on
which all depends, the answer to which requires a complete rewrite of the
document.

Note that "revision" often means changing the purpose of the document. You can
go from reporting status to asking about key variables driving that status.
Text may not be the right medium for the new message.

2\. Edit ruthlessly. Everything can be shorter. The time you take clarifying
and shortening saves your readers that much and more -- since you, not they,
are best positioned to solve the puzzles posed by an obscure sentence, and to
summarize an overly long one. If your readers number more than one, the time
savings are multiplied.

3\. Be very clear in your terms, meanings and references. If they aren't
clear, explain them. Did that explanation just blow up your document's
organization? Time to revise. Be precise. Your audience does not have your
perspective -- your local environment variables are not theirs -- you need to
orient them to the topic before you can expect casual references to be
meaningful.

4\. Much business writing requires an imperative style. At the top, tell your
reader the action or decision expected / hoped for of them at the end of the
document, and tell them what you will talk about. As you provide information,
keep it in relation to the action expected of them. If there is no relation,
what is it doing here? If it must be in here, why? and what are the
implications for the stated purpose of the document? Is it time to revise
again?

At the end of the document, give them detailed instructions about what they
should do next -- call at this number, email that address, provide these
thoughts, whatever.

Good training in writing is available and worthwhile. If you really want to
get better, seek it out.

~~~
michael_nielsen
I once asked a well known science writer how many times he will revise
passages. He sighed and replied "sometimes, for the difficult spots, maybe
fifty to a hundred."

This made me feel much better about my own writing, which often goes through
many, many drafts.

It also helped me appreciate Thomas Mann's maxim that a writer is someone who
finds writing harder than other people.

------
dude_abides
This is the most valuable thing I've learnt during my PhD. PhD teaches you:

    
    
      research skills                                     50%
      ability to communicate your research to others      50%
    

In my experience, I've noticed a lot of very smart hackers to be woefully bad
in communication, and PhDs to be much better than the median at it. On the
other hand, I think there is no correlation between research skills and having
a PhD.

------
jack-r-abbit
An interesting take on the topic. I would tend to agree with it. I've always
maintained that it takes a certain something to be a programmer. The specific
language is less important if you have a "programmer's mind". I've worked with
a bunch of different languages. Once you get over the varied learning curve of
the exact syntax and structure, it really just leaves you with the general
logic and planning and all the stuff that any app is going to require
regardless of the language. These aspects are not as easily learned as things
like "always (or never) terminate with a semi-colon" or "white space matters".

But I also struggle a fair amount with remembering all the rules... and
exceptions to those rules... and exceptions to those exceptions... when it
come to American English. Sometimes I actually have to pause and mentally
recite the rules for "its vs. it's" and things like that. I think that comes
from there not being a strict compiler for the that. The reader is going to be
more forgiving in the sense that even if you misuse _its_ when you should use
_it's_ , the reader is going to to understand your overall meaning. Most won't
correct you because it doesn't really matter to them. Think about the
butchered language that gets used on Twitter to get things into 140 chars. It
would be nearly impossible to write an interpreter that would take most tweets
and rewrite them in proper English. You have too many variations to make that
work. But the reader will probably have less trouble with it.

~~~
astral303
The most crucial part is expressing your idea clearly. Being concise. Not
wasting the reader's time.

If you have great content in your writing, the reader will treat "syntax
errors" as "warnings."

------
makecheck
Communication isn't one-way.

There are billions of people and plenty of languages out there (nearly 200 are
spoken by at least a few million people per language, if you go by the list on
Wikipedia).

We live in a world where _most_ co-workers have probably had to claw their way
up to their current language proficiency.

People who only know one language can't really complain about poor
communication. _Both_ people in a conversation have a responsibility to work
at closing any gaps, and frankly a native speaker has more than 50% of that
responsibility.

Even if you have learned another language, do you really know how tough it
could possibly be? For example, have you learned to read, write, speak, swear
and slang in the 2nd language to the point where no one will misunderstand
you? And here's the real test: is the alphabet the same as your native
language or is it something totally new?

I grew up with English. I spent years learning to read, write and speak
French, and while this gave me some appreciation for the difficulty in
learning a language it was still the same letters, similar words and a few new
rules. I've since invested a lot of time in learning basic Japanese and _that_
is something I'd recommend to anyone who thinks they're an expert at a
language.

You have to try something completely unlike anything you've ever seen before
you understand what a chore it must be for others to try to communicate with
you.

------
drumdance
The funny thing is we live in an era where more people write more than ever -
between Facebook, forums, online dating profiles etc. Twenty years ago the
average high school graduate stopped writing anything longer than a shopping
list, or maybe a letter, after age 18,

~~~
sitkack
but they were probably more diligent in the writing they did do. now writing
is trash.

writing is another form of informal speech.

What others haven't said is that, writing is both the formulation of logical
thoughts and the communication of those thoughts so they can be understood by
another person. Writing and logic go hand and wrench.

------
angusgr
_Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which
are copies of the communication structures of these organizations._

\-- Conway's Law ( <http://design.caltech.edu/erik/Misc/Conway.html> )

First reading this adage was a relevation. I realised I've never worked on a
technical project that wasn't constrained by it. This post/discussion reminded
me of it again.

------
callmeed
"On Writing Well" from W. Zinsser is one of the few books I've read multiple
times over the years and probably the book I've recommended and loaned out the
most.

[http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-25th-Anniversary-
Nonficti...](http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-25th-Anniversary-
Nonfiction/dp/0060006641)

Anyone who runs a business, has a blog, has to communicate with other, or
sends email should read it. Twice.

~~~
kalininalex
Have this book, and couldn't agree more.

------
einhverfr
Writing strikes me as providing different fundamental skills. Here's the rub:
computer languages are entirely prescriptive-- behavior is defined by the
compiler. Natural languages are defined entirely by usage and here the
descriptivists rule. Even in hyper-defined jargons like legalese,
interpretation matters and there is no single, objective reference point.

I believe everyone should learn to code trivial programs. I also think there
is great value in truly mastering one's own language (and I say this as one
who can fluently read Middle English and who can parse my way through Old
English given some time). But they are different skills. You can't get them
all from one or the other.

If you want to compare writing to programming, then you should consider
comparing it to writing portable software in a language where every reader has
coded his/her own compilers based on their own unique understandings of the
standards! But writing isn't the same as coding.....

------
conradev
I often find it annoying in writing _and_ in speech when people don't know the
correct technical terminology for an idea they are trying to express, when
they ought to.

Believe it or not, there are people out there that write Objective-C, for
example, and don't know what an "instance variable" or a "class method" are by
name.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
Or go blathering along about ctors or visitors. If you want to use slang from
some random book or website, define it.

------
nosse
A while a go I saw this article that told that strongest correlation with
economic success now is with reading skills within that nation in 1900. (sorry
I lost the article)

What is the reading of today? I think it's coding and here's why: A young
person is good at school in two things, math and biology. She thinks that a
career of mathematician would be little boring, so she chooses to become a
biologist. She doesn't ever think about becoming an engineer because she never
had to do anything that would have indicated that shes good at it.

Now how about a school where people have to learn to code just a little.
Suddenly the people who are naturally talented at it start to do it. Not just
the people who think it's cool because their elder brother codes. People have
a strong tendency to do things they are good at. But only if they know they
are good at it.

------
augusto_hp
The next great thing will be a post titled: "Please: stop with 'please'
titles"

~~~
BurritoAlPastor
"Please" considered harmful?

~~~
augusto_hp
In a series of posts that uses it to self-promotion? IMHO yes.

~~~
sarenji
It was a reference to this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful>

Namely -- Frank Rubin published a criticism of Dijkstra's letter in the March
1987 CACM where it appeared under the title _'GOTO Considered Harmful'
Considered Harmful._ The May 1987 CACM printed further replies, both for and
against, under the title _'"GOTO Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful'
Considered Harmful?._ Dijkstra's own response to this controversy was titled
_On a Somewhat Disappointing Correspondence._

:-)

~~~
augusto_hp
My (really) bad! Shame on me.

------
benthumb
What's the difference between coders and the population at large? My thought
is that it's the difference of problem granularity/scale/scope. In general,
computer programmers are interested in solving bit-based problems, the rest of
the population not so much.

That said, my opinion is that 'programming' in the broadest sense is a native
capacity of humans and therefore is not special. If you haven't realized by
now that algorithms == recipes == best practice methodolgies == etc. you're
missing the forest for the trees: programming is systematic problem solving
period. C# mavens aren't the only ones who program; we all do.

------
jeffpersonified
The liberal arts need to be valued more highly. 'Nough said.

------
liquidcool
If you're willing to spend a few dollars to improve your writing, buy "Style:
Toward Clarity and Grace" by Joseph Williams ([http://www.amazon.com/Style-
Clarity-Chicago-Writing-Publishi...](http://www.amazon.com/Style-Clarity-
Chicago-Writing-Publishing/dp/0226899152/)). It's far better than a list of
rules; it breaks down sentence and paragraph construction and shows you
exactly how to write more clearly (and less academically). And it accomplishes
this very quickly, with a marked improvement in your writing after only a
couple chapters.

------
craigyk
Exactly what I thought when I saw all the responses to Atwood's original post.

I think he meant to play the realist card. Of course the world would be better
if more people learned how to code, but that comes at a substantial time cost.
Lets say I argued on how everyone should learn to play an instrument. There
are many intangible benefits to this, but lets get real. The world would only
be a better place, truly, if everyone learned how to play an instrument _well_
, and there just isn't enough time for that.

------
xsmasher
"Neither can his Mind be thought to be in Tune, whose words do jarre; nor his
reason in frame, whose sentence is preposterous; nor his Elocution clear and
perfect, whose utterance breaks itself into fragments and uncertainties." -
Ben Jonson via Richard Mitchell

<http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/>

------
barbazfoo12
Maybe the thought of people who do know how to communicate, such as Mayor
Bloomberg, learning to code is bothersome to Jeff Atwood. If so, consider why.

My concern is that Bloomberg is just looking for money. He may have no
interest in how a computer works.

If he could code, what sort of programs would he write?

For example, with respect to the desktop and the web, many "coders" write
programs that are a constant game of manipulation of naive end users. The
moral issues raised in programming are seemingly endless. It's relatively rare
to find a programmer with a social conscience. Mainly because few people with
a social conscience know how to program.

Would people like Bloomberg bring a greater sense of social conscience to
programming? Or would they worsen the situation?

On the flipside, having more people be more familiar with programming might
reduce the amount of manipulation that is possible. More people might start
demanding and reading source code. That could be a positive force.

~~~
adavies42
you know, now that i think about it, the first question really ought to be,
why the hell does the man who brought us the
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_Terminal> bloomberg terminal need to
"learn to code"? is he just talking about updating his skills, or has he
actually been running one of the world's biggest data companies for more than
thirty years without knowing how to program?

~~~
barbazfoo12
It just goes to show that you do not need great knowledge of programming to
launch a business that relies on it. The founders of Bloomberg LP all had very
good knowledge of the financial sector and the technology used in it. They
knew the shortcomings in the solutions provided to trading desks. But whether
any of them could themselves construct a Bloomberg Terminal is, in retrospect,
irrelevant.

They had industry-specific knowledge of the problem they were attempting to
solve. Unless you have worked in an industry, as a programmer you are unlikely
to understand the true nature of the problems in that industry. And thus, you
will not know what opportunities there might be for innovation. Is this the
so-called "non-technical founder"?

Bloomberg wants to know how to build things in software. He wants to stimulate
New York's economy with more software development industry reducing reliance
on the finacial industry alone. It's interesting if nothing else.

------
dfc
One of my all time favorite pieces on writing is Orwell's "Politics and the
English Language."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Langua...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Language)

------
perlpimp
there are two sources of problems for Unix geek: 1\. permission problems 2\.
communication problems

The latter is the source of problems for most people, so learning to write and
speak clearly will give you a huge leg up on becoming successful.

------
AngrySkillzz
All this back and forth makes me want to write a blog post called "Please
learn"

~~~
ralfd
Had the same thought. After your post I will write a blog post called
"Please!"

------
darkstalker
Please learn to learn

------
agentultra
They mayor of NYC wants to learn to code? Awesome!

And yet detractors think he should spend more time off, "doing mayor things."
Leave it to the professionals. We don't need to teach everyone to be a master
carpenter, right?

"Learning to code," isn't just about teaching people another vocation. We
don't teach kids to be carpenters because we know that with a little math,
some reading, and advice from a carpenter that kid could figure it out. If you
give them a rule in the imperial system and blueprints in metric they should
be able to figure it out. Mathematics and literacy give them tools to solve
_other_ problems. We consider them fundamental tools.

The reason why teaching people to _compute_ or "code" as some are putting it
is to teach them a kind of literacy. You can't take the fundamental math and
reading skills you're taught in school and write a computer program to
classify your email for you or scrape the sports scores off your favorite site
to track your bets. Without understanding the fundamental concepts of
computation there are a whole categories of problems and inefficiencies that
persist unaddressed.

So what's wrong with teaching people the basics? Most people can figure out
how to unclog a drain or bang together a decent shed without investing their
lives into becoming master plumbers and architects. It may be easy to think
that today there just aren't the prevalence of problems in peoples' lives
where a rudimentary understanding of what a program is and what a process is
can solve, but I dare you to keep hold of that notion for the next ten years.
Programming to those who are experienced practitioners is a skill that is
easily taken for granted. You may think that programming involves sitting in
front of a computer noodling with compilers while life passes you by but you'd
be wrong. With enough of a basic understanding, the fundamentals, that we can
give someone an intuition about what a program is and how it can be used to
spin off processes that can do work for you and apply the things you learned
in your maths classes or automate tedious work in your research... we can
really make the world a much better place.

How would software patent reform still be an issue today if we had been
educating people on the fundamentals of computer science for the past few
decades instead of hiding it in the upper eschalons of academia? Would
phishing scams still be profitable with fewer rubes? How much inefficiency
could be saved in research, finance, design, journalism, and so forth if
everyone had at least a basic understanding of what a program is? Sadly most
people don't it seems. They use computers all day long but if you get talking
with them about it they don't understand what the machine is doing... they're
just merrily typing in and clicking on the things they're told to and wouldn't
have the faintest idea if there was a better way to do things. Such is the way
the world is when people are ignorant of the tools they use.

It's simple to dismiss now and maybe in ten years time your friends and family
will still throw their hands up at computers and marvel at how the hell they
work. Perhaps as many people do now with math. But that's a poor reason to
suggest people shouldn't be taught these things and should remain ignorant.

------
douglasisshiny
It's a bit funny that the title of this article is broken English.

------
xbryanx
Within which he kicks it off with with a passive sentence...

------
nerdfiles
1\. Read "Politics and the English Language", Orwell

2\. Goto <http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/>

3\. Read [http://www.amazon.com/English-Language-Users-
Guide/dp/158510...](http://www.amazon.com/English-Language-Users-
Guide/dp/1585101850/ref=sr_1_23/103-1573744-7019061?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193178971&sr=1-23)
by Jack Lynch (as well)

4\. Understand Paul Grice's Conversational Maxim's:
<http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/dravling/grice.html> (Understand that they
are, as proffered by Grice, descriptive, partly anthropological heuristics for
analysis of certain ways of talking, or façon de parler; but they _may_ also
be developed as normative principles which may be used to constructively guide
all talk exchanges.)

Fig. 1, Grice's Maxims:

❝ The maxim of quantity, where one tries to be as informative as one possibly
can, and gives as much information as is needed, and no more.

The maxim of quality, where one tries to be truthful, and does not give
information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.

The maxim of relation, where one tries to be relevant, and says things that
are pertinent to the discussion.

The maxim of manner, when one tries to be as clear, as brief, and as orderly
as one can in what one says, and where one avoids obscurity and ambiguity.

Fig. 2, an excerpt from J. Lynch:

❝ ##Prepositions.

Prepositions are usually little words that indicate direction, position,
location, and so forth. Some examples: to, with, from, at, in, near, by,
beside, and above.

A quick-and-dirty rule of thumb: you can usually recognize a preposition by
putting it before the word he. If your ear tells you he should be him, the
word might be a preposition. Thus to plus he becomes to him, so to is a
preposition. (This doesn't help with verbs of action; show + he becomes show
him. Still, it might help in some doubtful cases.)

##Prepositions at the End.

Along with split infinitives, a favorite bugbear of the traditionalists.
Whatever the merit of the rule — and both historically and logically, there's
not much — there's a substantial body of opinion against end-of-sentence
prepositions; if you want to keep the crusty old-timers happy, try to avoid
ending written sentences (and clauses) with prepositions, such as to, with,
from, at, and in. Instead of writing “The topics we want to write on,” where
the preposition on ends the clause, consider “The topics on which we want to
write.” Prepositions should usually go before (pre-position) the words they
modify.

On the other hand — and it's a big other hand — old-timers shouldn't always
dictate your writing, and you don't deserve your writing license if you
elevate this rough guideline into a superstition. Don't let it make your
writing clumsy or obscure; if a sentence is more graceful with a final
preposition, let it stand. For instance, “He gave the public what it longed
for” is clear and idiomatic, even though it ends with a preposition; “He gave
the public that for which it longed” avoids the problem but doesn't look like
English. A sentence becomes unnecessarily obscure when it's filled with from
whoms and with whiches. According to a widely circulated (and often mutated)
story, Winston Churchill, reprimanded for ending a sentence with a
preposition, put it best: “This is the sort of thing up with which I will not
put.” [Revised 12 Jan. 2007.] ❞

Write and talk appropriate to your audience. Your audience in some cases might
be your self. Determine what criteria you demand for a successful "talk
exchange" such that shared knowledge may be produced, rather than actionable
results (we should ignore implementation details).

~~~
rayiner
Bookmarked!

------
tapertaper
The font on that website hurts my eyes.

~~~
TomGullen
Seems fine to me

------
squarecat
"I tweeted Jeff Atwood’s piece because, well, I agree that it’s pretty silly
to think that the world is going to be a better place if the Mayor of New York
City learns how to code. I agree with Atwood that his valuable time would be
better spent elsewhere."

Oh yeah? And who the fuck are YOU, sir?? Or Mr. Atwood?

For all you know, the world would be infinitely better if the Mayor of New
York City learns how to code.

But I suppose we'll never know, because no one should ever do anything other
than what they are to be doing right then.

Only.

Forever.

In that case, stop writing and go back to whatever it is you were doing
before, because the world is not a better place when you blog -- your valuable
time would be better spent elsewhere.

Is not history itself defined by breaking patterns? They don't call it a
"turning point" because it sounds nice.

How many events that altered the path of mankind were part of "The Plan"? How
many were arrived at by strictly adhering to a well-defined path?

~~~
squarecat
Fear change much?

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_mentality>

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_consciousness>

[http://imlookingattheworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/borg....](http://imlookingattheworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/borg.jpg)

