Great article on IBM’s website about the use of language in computer programs. The basic theme is:
Clarity is important. Inexplicably, programmers who are otherwise quite obviously capable of precision in describing exactly what they want a computer to do in a dozen programming languages often cannot manage to describe clearly what it is about to do when using English.
I wrote a post a few weeks ago about an incomprehensible error message I saw recently. I also wrote a post about Google’s smart use of language to appear more trustworthy and understandable (Not the usual yada yada).
Technorati Tags: Programming, dialog, language, writing, IBM, Google
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This reminds me of something I found on the New Scientist website some time ago:
The Mozilla Thunderbird email program offered Angela Brown the option: ‘Restore natural order’.
“Will selecting it just sort my messages”, she asks, “or will it reset the entire universe?”
Matthew,
Just ran across your blog and site — and I love them! I’m also a huge fan of good writing. I’m the author of “The Corporate Blogging Book” (Penguin Portfolio – August 2006). It will be published in the UK by Piatkus in September! You can find it on amazon.co.uk.
I think sometimes messages don’t need to be directly readable to the user, but to the programmers themselves. That makes it easier to locate and fix bugs. That is the case of “Can’t make a visible window modal.” that you gave. A simple “Problem in windowing structure.” or something like that would be more difficult to find in the code. This is valid, of course, if you’re going to report the problem. If you’re gonna try to fix it by youself or need to make a decision right away — as in the “restore natural order” example above –, then I agree with you.