Reading and listening are great ways of learning. Using software saves tremendous time in solving technical problems and enables the user to make sound and wise technical decisions.
Everyone writes something sometimes in one’s life, even though not everyone writes software. When it comes to article writing and software coding, there are some common attributes. Both require careful architecture of ideas, logic and purposes. But too many times, both endeavors suffer one way thinking. That is to express what is in their mind, without knowing what readers or users want to see or use.
Writers tend to overload the information in articles, thinking the readers will benefit with vast information. Similar, software developers are inclined to add more functions in terms of buttons, menus, and check boxes than needed.
Our intentions might be good, but the results are long articles and big applications. Just like that over watering is perhaps the biggest killer of pot and container grown plants, readers and users can easily get lost in absorbing key information in an article or finding the basic function in a software package.
The gaps between creations and market needs could be bridged with the communication between writers and readers, developers and users, and conscious efforts to simplify things. It is easy to make simple things complicated, while it is difficult to make complicated things simple. This requires intelligent efforts.
We are living in a world of limited resources including time. Too much information or unnecessarily complicated application wastes our time, to say the least. They also dilute the key points or functions.
In their book "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, the brothers Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier.
In talking about how to simply writing, they mentioned "upside-down pyramid": Journalists, when writing news, always place the most important information first within a text and the other material should in order of diminishing importance.
The origin of this style is from war-time reporter, who had to send out the most important information at the earliest, because the reporter could get killed or communication equipment could fail.
The format is also valued because readers can leave the story at any point and understand it, even if they don't have all the details.
For newspaper, if editor wants to reduce the size of certain article for "Breaking News", he can always "cut from the bottom".
If we all could adopt this style for writing or coding, our readers and users will be thankful.
