Human-based computation

Paul Graham here compares relative difficulty of programming vs writing.

Switching back to writing has confirmed something I’ve always suspected: writing is harder than hacking. They’re both hard to do well, but writing has an additonal element of panic that isn’t there in hacking.

I feel pretty much the same way, though I would rather explain difficulty by a context switch and different experience. Apparently, for most non-programmers writing is easier. I did quite a bit of both, but when I switch between them, I still feel difficulty and lack of confidence for some time. Here is my understanding why it happens.

There are at least two major differences between programming and writing that require adaptation. One difference is related to how the new piece of authorship is created, another is about its evaluation.

Programming languages are less expressive than natural languages. Pieces of code in a programming language depend less on their context. They do it mostly in strict and predictable ways. Their relative independence make it easy to combine them. In natural languages, the degree of context dependence is much higher and dependencies can be subtle and less predictable. Different word associations of different readers can lead them to different interpretations and conclusions.

There are many automated tools to test/evaluate programming result and they all give you objective feedback. Most programmers are rewarded psychologically when their program compiles, runs, and finally, passes all tests. There is an immediate feedback at any of these stages, that supports their confidence. Quite a different thing in writing. While there are automated ways to check spelling and syntax, I don’t know any tools to test semantics. It is not even clear if such tests are possible. We can specify the architecture a program will run on, but we can’t specify what kind of reader will read our writing. In some sense, our writing is executed concurrently in minds of people, each with a unique architecture.

However, writing becomes easier if we stop thinking like programmers. Instead of trying to achieve a specific goal in an optimal way, we can open our minds to other people and share our thoughts.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 25th, 2006 at 11:09 pm and is filed under programming, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.