So, over the last few weeks, I have started to learn about Programming. Oh, that is an Antithesis. Something else should have come first. My mentor on this technical writing journey, Sunkanmi Fafowora, advised me to learn about Programming. The reason he gave was simple. As a technical writer, I would have to interact with programmers a lot of the time. It is only required that I have basic knowledge of Programming. This way, since the work is usually a collaborative effort, I won’t be constantly left in the lurch when communicating with these Programmers or trying to troubleshoot collaborative errors.

More specifically, I was advised to choose Python as the Programming language and/or type to learn. And phew! I was off to codecademy.com. Here, I have learnt only a few things about Python so far. I have also consulted Edglow on YouTube, thereby watching very concise and edifying videos about Python. Sadly, Edglow uploaded only two videos and stopped. I was salivating like a dog at the sight of a bone after seeing his videos, in the excitement to see the next one, but there was none.

The Initial Lessons

I have learnt that there are three basic things to learn in PYTHON namely Data types, Keywords and Variables. Data to the computer is anything fed into the computer which is either an alphabet, a number or a combination of both. Integers, float, character, string and Boolean are the five examples of Data types.

For Keywords, there are a ton of keywords that are identified by the computer but some of the top ones needed for programming include:

TRUE, FALSE, RETURN, FOR, WHILE, AND, IF and OR.

Variables are the names given to a piece of information or data so that the computer can recognise those data each time the variable is fed into it.

Somewhat, this is beyond the binaries of 0s and 1s I learnt about computers in College. From my communication knowledge, the only concept close to this is Man-Machine communication as one of the types of Communication.

A Sharp Contrast

But step by step, I am beginning to enjoy the journey. It is difficult to think of a language the computer understands as it differs from the normal human language. What I have learnt so far shows me that the language of the computer is not one alien language I haven’t heard before. It is just a mismatch, a combination of the alphabet and numbers I already know, thereby using them as instructions for the computer to act or not to act at certain times when it is interacted with by something (human or non-human).

It also amazes me that some part of this computer language is the opposite of how humans use them. For instance, using the asterisk sign (*) in normal human language denotes something of importance that must not be ignored. In computers, it is an indication that whatever comes after this sign is to be ignored.

Why I think Technical Writers are Interpreters

Summarily, technical writers are like interpreters (not the ones between a Higher Level language and the Machine Language in the Computer language process), but human interpreters who act as middlemen to interpret computer or tech-based products to users.

I cannot wait to uncover more in this journey of learning. Since Focus is sacrosanct to growth, in my next post, I shall be digressing a little into what I may have found as the different classes of Technical Writing and which I should be focusing on.

Au revoir