Writing More as a Software Engineer

I’ve recently become a software engineer after a career switch from marketing. In my short time so far, I’ve come to realise the importance of writing regularly.

Clear communication is an essential part of any work, but even more so in software development. We interact with computers that understand code, not the communication that we’re used to with other fellow humans. The nature of code makes it such that we need to be highly specific with our instructions for the computers. There is no such thing as hidden context that has to first be understood before the computer can understand our code. What you see is what you get.

Comparatively, inter-human communication is overloaded with context and prerequisites to understand each other. Whenever I step back to take a look at how communication happens, I’m always amazed by how humans are able to understand each other without needing everything to be explicitly said.

Having clear thinking is critical to success as a software engineer. I think that putting our thoughts into writing is one of the best ways to improve our clarity of thought. Why? Because the act of writing forces us to transform the thoughts in our head, which may seem clear but is usually a jumbled mess, into coherent sentences that can be understood by others.

So how do I find time to write? I think it’s a matter of getting in a few lines a day no matter what happens. What I do is to block out 10 to 15 minutes everyday before I start work to write a little bit. It can be dumping out content or editing what I previously wrote. The key is to spend a little bit of time daily on it. Eventually, all the small bits of writing add up and I get full articles seemingly out of nowhere.

While this isn’t perfect, I have found that this is what works for me right now. I think trying to write more has helped me have clearer thinking in general as well, and I choose my words more carefully when speaking because of the mental training that my mind has gotten used to when trying to communicate with clear writing.