The Better You Program, The Worse You Communicate

Boy is that not true. The key to miscommunication and bad programming is the same: not to be clear in your own head about what you're doing.

I think a lot of programmers mistakenly use this as an excuse when in reality, they should just get out more :)

I disagree with the headline.<p>The site, however gives me "Service Unavailable", which is either bad programming or bad communication.

Some well explained thoughts. Overall, I agree with the "gist" of it. :-)<p>I have experienced something similar, after rather intense stretches of coding, especially when it involved optimization or visualization, ... I sometimes find it difficult to resurface and be verbally expressive and articulate again.

It's true. The better you program, the worse you are at breathing. The essence of programming is to not repeat yourself. The essence of breathing is repetition. In, out, in, out. QED.

Well, it's true that they're different means of communication; programming is like math. But if the title of the article were actually true, then super-clear writers like Ka-Ping Yee would be terrible programmers, and good programmers like Larry Wall or Linus Torvalds would be bad writers. In fact all three of those people are expert at both forms of communication, and that's typical in my experience.

You'll find that philosophers talk to each other in much the same way that programmers talk to compilers. Philosophers invent and define new terms all the time, try to make the most general true statement possible, and spend an interminable amount of time debugging each other's arguments.

And here we have a massive movement from programmers saying "how come ? You are wrong, I communicate well. If you communicate bad, you are bad programmer."<p>Well, that sounds like healthy putting yourself in question, and healthy communication "You're wrong, because you are".<p>About me, I don't think I'm an awful programmer, but I see many valid points in this (mostly about the "i explained it to you once, how come you don't get it !" :P).<p>Quite interesting read, not especially to take as a direct truth, more to lightly smile about it. Obviously, the "better you program", the less you are open to light criticism.

I disagree.<p>I think that if the average programmer steps out once in a while to communicate with humans and keeps social momentum, he can differentiate between the two.<p>As a programmer, I don't talk to my friends like they're machines. I do, however, speak pragmatically and logically. I also use common sense.<p>I do have a little unproven, silly theory that good programmers are able to solve social conflicts easier because of good debugging skills. My life seems to be rather drama-free. I could just be full of shit, though. :)

The argument supposes that people have a single set of abilities/tendencies that they apply to everything they do. That is ridiculous: we adapt our behaviour to the circumstances. When you're with friends, you behave and communicate differently then when you are with colleagues or relatives. Cooking requires a different kind of attention than fixing your bike does.

Some interesting points, but obviously a coder bait topic.<p>I'd argue that the best coders express themselves to humans and computers both pretty well: with clarity and brevity, and without introducing unnecessary new concepts. And they cover their corner cases. :)

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