Writers' Workshops & the Work of Making Things: Patterns, Poetry...

If you are a programmer, attending a writer's workshop may not be an event on your list of things to do, as you probably do not consider yourself a writer. And yet, if you are a developer on a widely used piece of software, the consequences of what you write may be seen by more people than read the material of all but the most popular of authors. Furthermore, despite all efforts to quantify and qualify software development as a branch of engineering, it remains a creative act, and the code of the best developers is similar to poetry. It reads like a great sonnet, with a rhythm and flow that impresses and teaches you. Furthermore, software development is more than just creating code, there are associated documentation and help files to be written. While substantial improvement in the quality of user's manuals has been made over the past several years, much of it is still abysmal. Therefore, if I were to be named the manager of a large software project, I would require the complete set of documentation writers to attend a writer's workshop that follows the guidelines put forward in this book. Gabriel describes in complete detail how to manage such events so that everyone is exposed to the gentle, yet firm and complete form of criticism so necessary to good writing. He is certainly a rare individual, a combination poet and computer scientist, and he has introduced the concept of a writer's workshop to the software patterns community. Gabriel is clearly also a talented expository writer, as the explanations are an excellent combination of memoir interspersed with instruction. His experience in facilitating and attending such workshops shows a depth of background and understanding that exudes confidence in this form of training for designers. It is clear to me that everyone in a software project who writes something permanent can benefit from a workshop, and that includes the programmers. The most difficult hurdle in making such workshops a success is handling the problems of fragile egos, passionate beliefs in a system, insecurities and overly harsh criticism. Gabriel describes circumstances where he has been the witness to and recipient of criticism that is beyond the normal bounds considered to be constructive. This experience is put down in great detail and used as a backdrop for instructions on how to make the workshop process as egoless and constructive as possible. After I thought about if for some time, it was clear that a poet is an ideal person to teach developers about writing. For a poet must write with great clarity, brevity and purpose, for even the best poem can be weakened by one or two inappropriate words, a fact that Gabriel mentions using a couple of examples. Programs too, must also be written to such specifications, and even the best programs can be rendered into lawsuit fodder by a few incorrect statements. Poems are also constructed using abstractions and metaphor, the very foundations of modern programming techniques. Finally,

This is a unique book. It tells you about the writers workshopprocess. The writers workshop process has its origins in the creativewriting community, and has been used in the software patternscommunity. Richard Gabriel explains how the process can also be usedin other domains where creative effort is involved, such as reviewingmarketing materials. I book for two reasons. First it provide greatinsight into the creative process (as applied to anything) and thevalues that are used in the writers workshop can benefit anyone whocreates things, even if they don't use the workshop process. Second,if you do want to use writers workshops, this book explains the howsand whys of them. I had been involved in workshopping softwarepatterns since 1995, and I though that I pretty much understood whatthey were about. I learned a lot reading this book. I recommend this book for anyone who involved in the creativeprocess(of any sort): Software engineers, writers, teachers, andstudents.

Every fall, just after school starts, some of the finest minds in object-oriented programming depart for an extraordinary conference in an improbable location. Held at a turn of the century mansion hidden among the corn fields of central Illinois, the PLoP (Pattern Languages of Programs) conference is one of those rare, magical events where everything you know about the way the software world works is turned on its head. Instead of "acolytes" gathering around the feet of the "master" to hear the same talk that he gives at every other conference, experienced folks like Richard Gabriel, Ralph Johnson, Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham sit and give personalized advice about how the patterns and pattern languages written by first-time authors can be improved and strengthened. It's a place where you might find out one of your dinner companions has written four books on OO design and speaks at conferences twelve times a year, while the other is a new graduate student just getting started in the field. How does this occur? And why do people keep coming back year after year? The key is in the primary innovation of this conference -- bringing the notion of an Author's Workshop to computer science. Richard Gabriel is the person who introduced that idea to the computer science community, and he writes lucidly and joyfully about the wonder and the terror of Author's workshops in this delightfully agreeable little book.In this volume, Richard describes how the Author's workshop came out of the creative writing and poetry community, and provides a roadmap for carrying out a writer's workshop. He describes the benefits of the process, and gives sage advice to the participants in such workshops. He draws his stories and examples from his varied experiences in workshops in both communities (software and literature) and explains why such an unlikely way of doing things has come to be so valued and cherished by the software patterns community.So, if you've wondered why people in the software patterns community are so set on the way they run their conferences, read this book and you'll understand why. But that's not the only value; reading this book can give you insight into how to improve your own writing in any genre, and how to marshall the resources of your communities to improve the quality of your work. I'm hooked on this process, and I'm delighted that I finally have something to refer people to so that I can share some of the magic of this unconventional way of teaching, and learning.