I’ve always been great with technology: both using it, and finding out what makes it tick. As a child I used to take apart watches (back when they were full of tiny gears) and put them back together again.
Later, I made my own gizmos, mostly electronics. Eventually I got into computer programming and building my own peripherals.
It was in my university electrical engineering program that I discovered the power of documentation.
In one of the software development courses I took, we had to use an esoteric language with an experimental compiler. The compiler had bugs: any variable declared as int instead of long int caused the program to fail. I didn’t know this until much later.
Even though none of my assignments shipped with working software, I got a pretty good mark – writing documentation more than made up for the lack of an operational program.
There is a lesson in this: good documentation can overcome a lot of technical glitches.
I also noticed that while my fellow engineers despised writing of any kind, I liked it.
Do you want to find out more? Contact Douglas Samuel