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I’m a software developer with a bunch of industry experience. I’m also a comp sci professor, and whenever a CS alum working in industry comes to talk to the students, I always like to ask, “What do you wish you’d taken more of in college?”
Almost without exception, they answer, “Writing.”
One of them said, “I do more writing at Google now than I did when I was in college.”
I am therefore begging, begging you to listen to @stephstephking: https://mstdn.social/@stephstephking/113336270193370876
@inthehands @stephstephking I am a French-Canadian. English is my second language. It is super depressing to have to correct verb tenses or even spelling in a code review, especially when it's code written by a native English speaker. We wish they would write more documentation, but if they did it would probably be full of mistakes too. I don't blame them, they didn't have enough reading/writing classes early on. The same is true of French speakers, because of education system and texting...
@skylark13 Indeed, it’s often the case that second-language speakers have better command of a language’s formal written grammar than native speakers! It is perhaps easier to stick to those rules when they’re the only ones one knows in a given language.
Even more than grammar, however, what •really• gums up an org is messy thinking: lack of critical examination, not having a point, inability to take multiple perspectives, inability to consider audience in communication….
@inthehands Sure, that is lacking too. But I hate that even the basics are not valued.
I often hear people say it's not useful to learn to write properly because you never write by hand anymore, and spell checkers are always available. Guess what, spell checkers are not always used, not always correct, autocorrect is often totally wrong, people don't even re-read their message before posting.
I pride myself on writing properly in both languages and it's seen as totally useless to some people.
@skylark13
My only quibble with that is that people often use grammatical pedantry as (1) a heuristic for judging the intelligence of others and/or (2) a smokescreen for their own poor thought processes. It does nobody a favor in either case.
@inthehands Totally true. I try to be constructive in all cases. Sorry if I came across as pedantic myself.
I only express my frustration in reference to people who genuinely do not see the value in learning.
@skylark13
You didn’t! It’s just a thing about which I try to remain sensitive, being a person who can be pedantic and also a person who works with and teaches people with many different native languages, experiences, cognitive types, and gloriously varied kinds of minds.