> Lots of talk here about writing being far superior to talking. This is entirely true.

This is simply not true. Writing - particularly in the context of instant messages sent during work - cannot convey tone, and it is far less asynchronous than being able to have a conversation with someone.

> A paragraph of the written word is scary to a percentage of the population, certainly most “normal people,” and definitely a large subset of engineers.

What a boringly cynical take, too!

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_Algernon_ a day ago | parent | next [-]

>This is simply not true. Writing - particularly in the context of instant messages sent during work - cannot convey tone, and it is far less asynchronous than being able to have a conversation with someone.

It is though. The amount of thought that can be put into writing is at least 1-2 orders of magnitude greater. The amount of thought that can be put into conversational speech is limited to roughly one second per second.

Writing also has the benefit of maintaining a record of what was said. The number of misunderstandings that could have been a avoided by writing is staggering.

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squigz a day ago | parent [-]

The amount of thought that can be put into writing as a function of total time thinking/communicating is probably nearly the same or less than talking. That is, if you spend a second figuring out what you're going to say, you can put more thought into your words.

> Writing also has the benefit of maintaining a record of what was said. The number of misunderstandings that could have been a avoided by writing is staggering.

Not everything needs to be recorded - and when it does, one can record the conversation, or take notes.

Not to mention, misunderstandings crop up in text all the time, often due to lack of tone being conveyed

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dfxm12 a day ago | parent [-]

Not to mention, misunderstandings crop up in text all the time, often due to lack of tone being conveyed

Can you elaborate on this? "Tone" is something that inherently has to be interpreted, so it doesn't make sense that you're attributing this as a quality that shields from misunderstandings.

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squigz a day ago | parent [-]

People attribute tone to text that the writer may not have intended. For example, someone might write something that is very brusque, but still meant it lightly, and people may interpret this as overly rude or aggressive - while had they spoken it, their tone would've conveyed their intent.

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dfxm12 a day ago | parent [-]

You're making assumptions.

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squigz a day ago | parent [-]

This whole thread is full of assumptions.

	▲	dfxm12 a day ago \| parent [-]
		OK, as long as you know you're just making stuff up, that's fine with me.

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mlsu a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Don't be fooled. My take is only cynical if I don't acknowledge that there are different types of intelligence. Multimedia, kinesthetic, emotional, interpersonal, spatial, logical...

For example: I can write. Maybe I can write better than a D1 basketball player. Am I smarter than them? ehhh, maybe not. Their "physical intelligence" is far superior to mine. I respect it as equal to my "verbal/writing intelligence." I am scared on the basketball court, it's foreign territory to me because I'm basically a nerd who spent my time reading books. They spent their time moving around on the bball court. The magnitude of the intelligence vector is large, it just points in a totally different direction.

If anything, I think this perspective is sorely missing. People respect reading and writing as an "smart person" activity but I think that's a stultifying perspective. Intelligence is incredibly broad, that's why you have to meet people where they are -- and many times that means communicating in a different way.

However, same as how "kinesthetic intelligence" correlates to basketball, "writing intelligence" correlates to engineering. The best software engineers are good at reading and writing; there are few exceptions in my experience.

Certainly I should have said, writing is superior in this context. We're on the proverbial basketball court in this conversation :)