On Transitioning From Software Writing to Just Writing

I guess you become a professional writer the same way you become a professional poker player. One day you just decide this is what you’re going to spend your waking hours doing. Both have equally poor chances of positive financial outcomes to boot.

But this is what I am committing to do now.

I have been a writer of another kind for a quarter century — a software writer. Some will call this programming or coding (even programmers and coders call it that) but I prefer “software writing”. The part I love about creating software is the writing of it. And just like the more common form of writing, software writing has two main components.

First, there is the thing you are writing about — your subject matter. You are making a game or an email client or a project management tool or a whatever. You are writing about something. Second, there is the way you write it. An infinite set of ways to describe the thing you are trying to build — your style.

It is hard to write code that makes a thing do what you want it to do at all times. This is stressful. You are doing your best to build a system that can accept a variety of inputs which create certain states of your system, the permutations of which quickly grow into the millions, then in a heartbeat, into the billions. Your job is to ensure the system handles each set of permutations correctly.

The way you write (your style) plays a large role in how well you can satisfy these…