programmers should be good communicators

I was way a worse programmer when i was a worse communicator, because a lot of coding is about communicating.

I realised this today reading a pull request. I never enjoyed reviewing pull requests, i just had to do it because it was effective and fruitful in a number of ways.

In the last months, living as a nomad made me a better communicator, and now i’m seeing the impact on my profession. This impact is more subtle that i had imagined.

So today, when reviewing a pull request, suddently i was struck by a different perspective on code. I always considered code to be something between me, or its author, and the machine. Suddently i saw the code as a way for the team to communicate internally, and that made me perform my review in a totally different way, which felt way more natural and effective.

We are told that programmers are bad communicators, mad scientists which are allowed to behave sometimes in rather inhuman ways. Our culture justifies that, so that we don’t see much dissonance.

Almost ten years ago while studying mechanical engineering i started learning about the importance of communication in science, math and engineering, but it sounds like i still have a lot to learn