

Show, Don't Tell - baha_man
http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/05/show-dont-tell.html

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TrevorJ
As a almost total visual thinker, I often get in trouble for taking it too far
and basically finishing a project in order to show somebody what my proposal
for given project actually is.

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notauser
My thesis supervisor always used to finish projects before submitting grant
applications, as it was the only way to put together a reliable estimate on
research projects.

The only trouble he had was when the application was bounced as being too
large for the funding requested :)

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xirium
From the article: And hey, that "better search" thingie you were droning on
and on about? How much better can searching the Internet really be? Why would
anyone care?

We get that quite frequently, so we just keep codin'.

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raganwald
Amen. The best way to convince me of your vision of the future is to build it.
Rock on!

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dnaquin
This was the core lesson of all my creative writing classes.

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unalone
It's something that applies to most art forms. The more you tell somebody what
something is, and the less you show them, the more time it takes for them to
comprehend it, and therefore the less it actually has an effect.

Of course, in creative writing it's a bit harder, since there are some very
good ways of showing people things that have become deeply cliched, and it's
considered improper to use those techniques. That's not the case online,
unless you consider glossy buttons and rounded edges to be a cliche, which is
entirely possible.

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edw519
1\. Tell them what you're going to show them.

2\. Show them.

3\. Tell them what you just showed them.

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wallflower
"The soft over comes the hard, the slow over comes the fast, let your working
remain a mystery just show people the result."

_Tao Te Ching_

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nertzy
This is what separates good webcomics from bad webcomics, I've noticed lately.

Also, The Darjeeling Limited does a great job of showing instead of telling.
And 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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phony_identity
That had the lowest meaning / words ratio of any programming blog post I've
read.

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rainface
A Rush fan?

