Re: noveling and software design

[t'mo]

So, coding skills translate into writing skills. Maybe it goes the other way too, as in using "narrative" to assist in software design? This article (which I just happened to come across yesterday) purports that idea.

[dimar]

..not only does it go the other way around, but (and many computer-scientist-types take umbrage at this sort of claim) being a good writer is almost more important than being a good 'coder' (unless you are the only one who will ever see your code, which rarely happens in most environments)

When you consider that even a simple "hello world" program can be intentionally coded as an "obfu" its easy to envision larger scale code becoming easily unmanagable because it doesn't have a clear beginning, middle and an end.

What's worse, a novelist doesn't have to worry about characters that misbehave (library modules with bugs) phrases that dont work on particular types of paper (platform-specific dependencies) or chapters that unexpectedly go on forever (runaway loops). A 'coder' has to worry about all of these, and thus has an even greater responsibility to 'weave these contingencies' into the overall 'story' to prevent it from becoming 'unreadable'.

[apotheon]

I meant to convey an understanding of it being a two-way street. I certainly didn't mean that the translation only went one way.

In other words, I agree with you. That looks like a good article, too, and I'll give it a read.