Editor's corner can english majors write maintenance documentation?
We software folk have never been very good at apparently astoundingly ill equipped)-but writing documentation. We write such abominable user maintenance documentation is another matter. The manuals that a whole industry has sprung up-book audience for maintenance documentation is softpublishers publish books that (of all things) tell you ware people, and maintenance documentation if how to use software products! Well, there’s a related nothing else must be tech talk. Furthermore, to idea emerging. Those English majors who brought write maintenance documentation you have to be us understandable and readable user manuals are able to read programs. English majors, untrained in now beginning to look at writing maintenance manuwriting programs, are being asked to read programs? als. And, as far as I can tell (and to my vast surprise), In languages like COBOL and even assembler? It they’re doing well at it. still boggles my mind. I do some education and training in companies around the world, and one of them hired me several months ago to talk to a bunch of people doing software maintenance documentation. When I arrived, much to my discomfort, I found that my audience was not just the usual bunch of software folk (“my kind of audience,” I like to think of them), but some nonsoftware-knowledgeable English major types. The second time they invited me in, I was somewhat better prepared! But imagine trying to give a typical software presentation about maintenance to an audience that knows nothing about writing software. But my course attendees say they are doing it, say they are successful at doing it, and say they are happy doing it. They are, as you might imagine, especially well-screened English majors, with a talent for logical thinking and in-depth analysis, but still . . . . English majors reading programs? With no formal training in writing them?