Information is not Communication
I’m shamelessly stealing the idea for this week from some training I got this week. The title is the exact thing that the teacher said. I really like it.
When we talk to someone (or, ahem, write little things on the internet), we usually think what we are doing is some form of “conveying information”. That means we want to be complete, detailed, give all the nuance, etc.
But the reality is that the actual job we are doing is “communicating”. That’s different in some subtle ways. It means we have to focus less on what we are doing, and more on how the receiver is reacting. We have to tell a story and choose details carefully.
Long ago in one of these letters, I wrote “if someone doesn’t understand you, it’s your fault”. I meant it a bit provocatively, to get people to think in terms of reshaping the “how” if a particular interaction isn’t working. But I think I was actually trying to say the same thing here. Communication is a job, that you are doing. If the other person doesn’t understand, it’s not their fault, any more than it’s the fault of a diner in your restaurant if you don’t cook edible food - they’re not obliged to eat it, if you haven’t done your job.
We’ve also talked a little about the idea of “worse is better” in tech: the very robust pattern that simple seems to succeed more than complete or correct does, when it comes to new technology being adopted. That strikes me as another aspect of this idea. Programmers put up projects with the idea that they are conveying information or functionality - that it has to be complete, and that their imagined user will do some work to consume it.
Wrong! Any project (or product) you put out is communication and it’s on you to make it work as well as possible for the intended audience. Users are lazy! Make it easy to understand what you’re talking about.
I hope I’ve done that in these letters. I do my best to have one idea and convey it in both a concrete and then generalized way. Thank you for reading them, and thanks to the folks who have sent me compliments - it keeps me going.
Have a good holiday - I’ll take a few weeks off and see y’all in the new year!