Bernard Meisler writes:

Even the best APIs are hard to use because the documentation, supposedly written in English, is terrible. Most engineers can't write a single coherent sentence, never mind string together a paragraph.

Poor documentation is the bane of my existence. At my company, when you're finished on a project, you're supposed to write up instructions in our Wiki, a private Wikipedia shared by our 400 employees worldwide. An enormous amount of time is spent explaining one's code to other people.

Telling somebody to "look it up in the Wiki" is tantamount to telling them to go f*** themselves. If someone had taught these coders to write well, we'd waste less valuable time.

Most engineers can't write a single coherent sentence, never mind string together a paragraph. Poor documentation is the bane of my existence.

Most importantly, though, explicit writing instruction reinforces the logic of language -- including the language of technology. Coding requires a certain kind of logic that's not unlike working on a crossword puzzle. It's all very self-contained, with its own internal logic. Being able to follow that logic requires understanding the basic logic of a sentence -- the kind of thing that is taught as a basic writing skill. That single ability is often what makes the difference between good coders and great ones.

Steve Jobs once famously said that all the minutes wasted through bad software add up to lifetimes lost.

We need to teach people how to think.

Once you can think, you can, with the right instruction, learn to write a good sentence.

the ability to write well helps you regardless of profession