Why writing code destroys your ability to write English

I’ve once heard that writing code is like writing literature. It’s true in the sense that you’re building something by typing words into a keyboard but writing code comes nothing close to the joy of writing out a story on your own.

I’ve also heard that modern web development is like a grown-up version of legos, and that is absolutely true. When you’re writing a story, you can’t simply import a snippet from one story then use it with this other snippet to create a sensible thing. Instead, you more or less have to build it up from scratch, finish it from beginning to end on your own.

It also is iterative in a way that writing English isn’t. For web development, you’re constantly writing code, making sure it works in the browser, then writing some more. We have tools that automatically sync your browser with your code for good reason. Here the thing your editing and your end product are on in the same, there’s no toggling back and forth, and a modern dev probably isn’t used to focusing on writing this much code in a huge chunk of time.

The final reason why writing literature isn’t like writing code is the thing I miss the most about writing. It’s that there isn’t a sense of ending. In a blog post, or any sort of literature really, you get to summarize and condense the piece that you’re writing, and wrap it up in a tidy bow. You also get the sense that sense of finality, that the story that you wrote is done. Anybody who’s ever written code could say that there’s nothing that’s really done, which is probably why there are a bajillion frameworks out there. But maybe there should be more finality in a developer’s life; maybe all devs should be writing more.