Hemingway on Coding
Ernest Hemingway On Writing is a book that for me sits alongside On Writing Well and Elements of Style as essential annual reading for writing good prose. The book is a collection of Hemingway quotes on the art and craft of writing, either interviews or letters from the man himself or through his lead characters, frequently also writers.
It is the book I am most likely to give you as a gift and I highly recommend it.
On a recent re-read I noticed that much of the advice is applicable to writing clean, well-crafted code. Writing a novel seems in any ways to be a similar task to finishing a big software project. From my own context as a bootstrapping solo entrepreneur, the advice really resonates. I have collected my favorites below. All quotes are excerpted from Ernest Hemingway on Writing by Larry W. Phillips, 2002 Kindle edition.
The topic of “life advice from Hemingway” will certainly raise some valid objections regarding his home life and untimely end. But the old man sure as hell knew how to write. And his personal disciplines allowed him to more or less escape the excesses and burnouts of his contemporary writers and to keep publishing better and better prose throughout his life. There are things to be learned here, if not mimicked verbatim.
The best quotes in the book are actually strictly about writing novels or other authors…
