random
writing
The most rewarding part of technical writing, in my personal perspective, is to understand the goal and the subjects really well. Good writing will bring itself if one truly understands what is being conveyed. There are, of course, other factors that help writing: language skill is one that can be acquired over time and adjusted to one’s taste. Besides, being aware of the psychology, cognitive and linguistic process behind the curtain help. Following are some super entertaining works on this:
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Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace develops a style that makes the best of “story telling”, leveraging ground breaking results in cognitive science, psycholinguistic etc. It changes how I write on non-fictional subjects, in English as well as Chinese (my native tongue).
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Thinking, Fast and Slow tells the other half of story telling: the psychology on the reader’s side.
beautiful tools
Computer science researchers are blessed with a great number of cute and accessible (playing) tools. Some of the beauties are: