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The writing motivation

Why do we write? For many technical students, writing is a much more difficult task than writing code, and it is not a very good experience to sit in silence with a computer for hours and find yourself unable to write anything decent. Even for someone with some experience, I estimate it will take more than six hours to write a 4000 word essay of decent quality, not counting the time consumed by the accumulation of material.

Why do you do something that takes so much work? I think there is tremendous value in this, and there are two levels of value, which I’ll call surface value and deep value.

Surface value is extremely utilitarian. For example, some students want to be promoted, and one of the indicators of promotion is personal influence, so writing articles can improve personal influence. For example, there is a Team Leader who wants to recruit. How do you let others know about you and your Team? Writing articles is also a good way. Others are written to superiors or stakeholders in the form of project presentations. The core focus of surface value actually lies not in the article itself, but in the person behind the article. The author’s expectation for readers is often not that readers recognize the content of the article or participate in the discussion of the content, but only that readers quickly recognize the author.

It’s putting the cart before the horse to write an article that only focuses on the surface value. It’s like writing a popular science article on PM 2.5. If you start with the motivation to sell your air purifier, the stench will quickly come through the lines.

In contrast to the surface value, I think any article should start from the deep value. The so-called deep value is the content of the article, the point of view of the article, the article should be as objective as possible, to approach the attitude of academic truth. I write an article because I have my own thoughts on an issue, and have a detailed understanding of the thoughts of many people. I find some conflicts of views, and I will not cater to others’ opinions for the sake of political correctness. I do my best to summarize ideas that I think are valuable and spread them to others in a clear and interesting way. I can feel the passion for writing, which comes from the joy of thinking, from the collision of ideas. In the process of writing, my thinking has grown. Through a lot of logical thinking, my thinking has been improved. Secondly, the articles written are of high value to readers because valuable knowledge is disseminated.

There is also a desire to spread valuable technology, such as Pivatal evangelist Josh Long, who has written a number of technical articles and great talks. I asked him why he did such a good job that he was named one of the 20 most influential people in Java for many years. His answer was this:

I think that people don’t trust technology, they trust people. while it is possible that the spring team could just publish good documentation and leave it for the world to find, It’s far more compelling when u feel u can ask questions of someone. And u can see that they’re having fun.I love Spring because it has made millions of lives easier. It makes me happy to think about its application, to see people happy with its possibilities.

An article is written because the author loves a technology, recognizes its value and believes in its potential. Or because the author wants to sell something. The difference between the two motives will soon be noticed by the more observant reader. Of course, the above motivations are often mixed, but if the main motivation for writing is superficial, then basically the writing is of little value.

influence

Josh is a worldwide influencer in the Java field. He has influenced millions of Java programmers around the world through lectures, books, and blogs, and has helped promote excellent technologies like Spring around the world. I wrote a book about Maven, which has sold tens of thousands of copies. Combined with the number of pirated PDFS, it has influenced more than 100,000 Java programmers in China and helped promote Maven technology in China. I joined Ali for more than 8 years and published more than 60 articles in the internal technical community ATA, with a cumulative reading of more than 50,000. I believe these articles also brought some small positive changes to Ali’s technology. From these perspectives, writing good articles takes a lot of effort, but because they are so easy to share and spread, they can affect many people quickly and last.

Of course, The Times are changing. In the past, due to the limitation of network technology, the transmission of text is relatively convenient, and the production and transmission cost of video is relatively high. Therefore, the actual influence of speeches is much weaker than that of articles and books. Today, the Internet and video technology are very mature, making high-quality video may be easier to spread.

Whether it’s articles or videos, influence should be used to do the right thing. Today, many portals of influence control have formed a new kind of power. They can control what sounds are easily heard, what pictures are easily seen, what words are easily read, and what attitudes are easily felt. Power formation turns into rent-seeking, and it often has nothing to do with the “right thing.”

I think the best example of doing the right thing by influence is these two articles by Zhang ANTHology, the first titled “Thinking through API Design Best Practices” and the second, “Thinking through Complexity Traps: Thoughts on Software complexity.” The content of the article are engineers happy about software design of the in-depth analysis and thinking, but I think in this case, is more important than the content in these two articles has a very important information, that is, “in alibaba, even the researcher level, but also someone watching technology in more conscientious, Go to hell with the lower-level managers who are already out of line and say that technology is just a detail.” (Of course, this information is only my personal opinion and cannot represent Gu Pu)

Writing methods

Our basic education to cultivate the students’ writing, seemed there is a problem, in my impression, common those good selection on the market, tend to be pay attention to form and routines, tend to lack logic point of view, is to use an idiom to summarize “moaning whinge-bags”, what are the high lyric, view and the end result is a big deal. Everyone’s overall foundation has been weak, and students engaged in technical work, often when reading Chinese is still a weakness, so the result can be imagined. The writing is not logical, the form is messy, the basic paragraphings, punctuation, wording is a lot of problems. The good news is that writing isn’t just a skill that can be trained in school. It can be trained on the job, too, and there are obvious rules to follow.

1. The reading quantity

Zheng Ziying (name: Nanmen) stressed the importance of “reading more” in his article. He used Douban to record his reading of more than 50 books a year, which is equivalent to at least one book per week, which is quite an astonishing number. I looked back at my douban record and found that I read about half as many books as he did, or 25 books a year. The benefits of reading needless to say, I would like to emphasize here is that constantly reading quality books can improve their word appreciation, read more books, pick up a catalog, find a few paragraphs to read, for the quality of the book, the in the mind probably have a spectrum. In fact, most of the time when you write, you also refer to the structure and method of existing examples. If you follow a large number of excellent cases, then naturally you will not be worse.

Before I wrote Maven, I read a lot of O ‘Reilly, Pragmatic Bookshelf, and Manning’s computer books, and most of these companies publish books that are very high quality and have a clear, top-down structure when it comes to technology. It is supplemented by cases of moderate size and non-boring theoretical analysis. It can be said that I wrote my own book by referring to the writing structure and writing method of those excellent books, and finally my book was generally well reviewed.

In addition to the benefits of writing methods, reading is more important to benefit from the content. Again, for example, I was in “how to do technical TL” this article mentioned the TL of reading a lot over the years he’s doing this on management of books, including “win”, “driving force”, “the secret of the door”, “nonviolent communication” and so on, these books help I added my own thinking on the great degree. Writing is thinking, and thinking does not appear in a vacuum, thinking needs raw materials, the common raw material is our actual work experience, but after all, one’s experience is very limited, and reading other people’s experience and thinking, with a humble attitude to provide more materials for thinking, obviously wise.

“How to Do a Technology TL” received an interesting comment which went like this:

Personally, I think management related books are chicken soup, do not need to read, if you need to rely on “how to do management” books to do management, then it shows that the person is not suitable for management.

The implication is that some knowledge, such as management, cannot be inherited and can only be acquired by nature. In response to this comment, I can only say that ignorant people are fearless. We must not have such a mentality when writing articles. No matter how unique and original our ideas are, we must not build fences and observe the sky from the bottom of the earth.

2. The material

I recently has been a year to do the related work of cloud native period I’ve been thinking, what is the cloud native architecture, the current interpretation of the word there are so many in the industry, but all these explanations can’t give to my satisfaction, they are all too lay particular stress on technique and the Angle of cloud vendors, and the lack of application architecture perspective. In view of this situation, I want to write something about the concept of cloud native architecture based on the past year and related work in the future, and make some supplementary elaboration on the concept to help people better use the technology. The article has not been written yet, but the motivation is formed in this way.

With that in mind, and some of my own personal interests, I have spent the past year accumulating material that is very interesting. For example, I have directly and deeply involved in the project of International Zhongtai and Kaola, whose architecture is based on cloud native technology, as well as many aliyun products, which have made a very big upgrade; I also had a detailed understanding of how Cainiao built platform services on the cloud for his partner companies. Learn how dingding and IoT, which sell their own services on the public cloud, are themselves building on the cloud. I communicated with my classmates through IM, phone or face to face, and they were friendly and open to me. Then I sorted out relevant materials and analyzed the same pattern. The human brain loves the stimulation of pattern recognition, and I enjoy doing it. In addition to actual cases, the opinions of industry veterans are also the sources for me to collect materials. For example, Lin Hao (name: Bi Xuan) recently wrote an article entitled “Further Embodiment of Cloud Origin”. Their articles usually do not follow what others say, and careful reading will find some original views.

In addition to the above materials that are closely related to the target theme, I also find that interdisciplinary reading often brings me unexpected gains. Take cloud native as an example. Although I work in this field, I have been reading some books on economics on and off in the last year or two, including Principles of Economics by Mankiw, etc. (I expect a lot of people have bought these books, but few non-professionals have really read them). When learning the way of thinking in economics, I wanted to explain the matter of cloud native from the perspective of economics. Originally self-built technical infrastructure, cloud-based infrastructure is gradually evolving in the era of cloud. How should the choice behind this be analyzed from the perspective of economics? What are the costs and utility of self-construction? What are the costs and utility of buying? After breaking down a complex business technology architecture layer by layer, it might be possible to analyze it layer by layer and make an economically optimal choice at each layer.

3. Mind mapping

I first learned about mind mapping from reading Pragmatic Thinking and Learning, where the core purpose of a mind map is to put everything related to a topic, no matter what is important or minor, into a single graph. The lines that are constantly expanding are not meant to form a clear structure. It’s to show the brain where the mind can expand. Therefore, the way of drawing mind maps should be as open and free as possible. The goal is to show all the contents related to the theme, rather than to establish a clear logical structure. So when I see a lot of mind maps that are actually catalogues, I think they’re basically using it wrong.

Writing articles (and making speeches are similar) is a process of opening up and then converging. In the early stage, materials are accumulated continuously, thoughts are expanded by using mind maps and materials are related. In this stage, logical thinking can be appropriately withdrawn to the background, eyes open, do not too much evaluation (building structure, sorting priorities is actually a kind of evaluation), with a similar empty cup mentality to listen to and observe the real world and other people’s ideas. Before I give a speech or write an article, I always find a quiet place, prepare coffee, open MindNode, or take out A4 paper and pen, and give myself half an hour to an hour to draw a thinking guide related to the topic. The combination of a quiet, undisturbed environment, no time pressure, and an energetic brain allows you to take your mind off the task at hand and allow the unattended to surface and land on the page.

Structure of 4.

It is not natural to pile a large number of materials together to make an article, the work must have a clear result. In architecture, we are familiar with the column structure of ancient Greek architecture, and the gothic architecture with pointed arch, rib arch, flying buttress and other elements as the core structure. In the program, common MVC, layered, microkernel and other patterns are also clear structure. The structure of the text can help the author express his ideas clearly and lead the reader to read in a clear path. With a mind map, I usually extract the most appropriate structure from the complex material and then organize the material based on that structure.

There are some common structures for writing technical articles. Here are some paradigms:

• Problem solving structure. This paradigm usually focuses on solving a specific problem, and the common logic is: background introduction -> problem raising -> discussion of problem-solving ideas -> problem solving -> value summary. This kind of structure is probably the most familiar to engineers, because they are good at solving specific problems.
• Knowledge introduction structure. This paradigm is usually used for the introduction of new technologies. The common logic is: Industry background -> technology proposal -> simple Demo -> Core Conecpts -> Concept in-depth and Demo (1-N times) -> prospect analysis. Many of the technical introduction articles you see often use this structure, which has the advantage of introducing new technologies and concepts from the beginning to the end.
• Viewpoint output structure. This paradigm is more challenging than the previous two. The common logic is: general view -> sub-view 1 -> sub-view 1 statement -> sub-view 2 -> Sub-view 2 statement… Summary – >. This structure of the article is very strong, but it is very challenging to write, because the exposition of the point of view needs rich materials and strict logical deduction, a little careless will be nonsense.

Of course, we don’t have to stick to these paradigms when we write. We can think about our own paradigms, but there is always a logical structure behind any paradigms. There’s a book I’ve heard a lot of people talk about (especially during performance season) called “The Pyramid Theory.” I checked out the introductions and reviews on how to effectively get people to understand you. I haven’t read the book, but it’s probably about structure and logic, so if you’re interested, you can buy it.

5. View

Not all articles have an opinion. For example, if you write an article summarizing how you solved a performance problem, you don’t have to have an opinion. Introducing a technology, such as Rust, is not about expressing an opinion. But articles that express their own opinions are often more attractive. For example, when addressing a performance problem, they emphasize the importance of understanding queuing theory. Introducing Rust with the promise of its future dominance in performance-sensitive scenarios also makes it easier to draw attention to the technology. Of course, the point of view is the need to demonstrate, its firmness and the investment degree of your demonstration is proportional to the logical derivation, data support, case analysis are very good demonstration means.

We also see some articles full of opinions, but they are mostly quotes, sometimes from Steve Jobs, sometimes from Zhang Xiaolong, sometimes from Jack Ma and so on. Of course, it’s more common to quote company executives, what they said, when, and so on, and then use that to back up your material. I think it doesn’t matter if I quote occasionally. If I always quote, I can only show that I don’t have a point of view, or my point of view is weak, and I need strong support for myself.

It is the words that dare to speak of the emperor’s new clothes that are more courageous and show their rich material and depth of thought. Technical articles should have the spirit of science, science is based on the continuous development of “say no” in the past, and technical articles should dare to express “say no” without fear of offending people. We should understand that the correct technology/architecture/solution should be able to withstand doubt, because if the technology is wrong, Even if no one dares question the circumstances of the moment, over time, reality makes mistakes exponentially more costly. Therefore, an article that says no to the status quo and offers its own counter view is more worthy of praise than one that is completely correct nonsense.

Stories of 6.

Strictly speaking, an entire story that embellishes its own content does not contribute to a logical argument. However, to make your essay/presentation compelling, the story element is essential. The human brain is very slow to respond to logic, and it needs to be trained to understand logic, but the story response, the three and four year old child has, the spirit of early human beings, such as Greek mythology and the Bible, is full of wonderful stories. Until today, no matter the company Intranet, or micro blog, everyone’s enthusiasm for eating melon is high, can not be lit by logical argument. It’s easy to empathize with a story, to put yourself in someone’s shoes, and then the cerebral cortex gets high, neural networks are activated, hormones are released…

This is the reality of human physiology, so we should respect (take advantage of) this reality when we write. I want to talk about the poor performance of the program leading to colleagues around 3:20 in the middle of the night woke up the phone; When something goes wrong, the cash register in the supermarket is broken. When introducing the new programming language, I need to show a piece of code. By way of comparison, I say Java is not good. Introduce Mesh by saying that you used to have to do this to upgrade your middleware, you don’t need to do this anymore, etc…

There’s a true story I like to tell when I introduce myself as Maven in Action:

A few years before the publication of my book, due to my vanity, I liked to browse the reviews of major book selling websites, such as Amazon, Douban, jingdong, etc., one by one. I would be delighted to see the reviews of five stars, and angry to see the reviews of one or two stars. Until one day, I found a 1-star comment on JINGdong. I opened the comment while feeling sad, but after reading it, I was happy. The reason for the 1-star comment was something like “Let your boss make milk tea, bad comment!” Originally because that time liu Qiangdong milk tea broke the news of love, hurt the reader’s heart, and then I was innocent.

This story has nothing to do with the technology I cover in the book, but I love telling it because it makes the audience laugh and remember that I wrote a book about Maven.

What does bad writing look like

Having talked so much about how to write good articles, I also want to talk about what bad articles look like. Bad articles are those that have little or no positive value to the reader, and even worse, not only no positive value, but also negative value. Let me summarize:

• Personal notes into articles. I solved a technical problem, made some notes, and then wrote an article and sent it out. At best, this kind of article can only be called material, because there is no summary and extraction, and it is written entirely from the perspective of one person. When readers read it, they will not feel the system, and the valuable parts are usually pitiful.
• PPT is pasted into articles. The author made a speech somewhere, and since he wanted to spread it to more people, he organized it into an article by means of stickers. Kindly, he added some explanatory text in the middle of the picture, and it was written. I first assume that the quality of the speech itself is good, with logic, viewpoints and cases, but even so, the reading experience of such a so-called article is very poor. In a speech, POWERPOINT is an auxiliary part of “speaking”. If there is only PPT, the real core part of “speaking” is lost. Therefore, it is more responsible for the speaker to write down what is said in rich words in a clear way, rather than just a few dry PPT pages.
• Write an article in a way that propagates war achievements. This kind of article is common in the organization, with many common titles such as “summary”, “year”, “system”, “reflection”, “outlook” and other words, usually this kind of article has neither system nor rare reflection, its main purpose is to take credit. I have done a lot of things in a year, and the results are very good. I have done a lot of things in a year, and the results are very good. This kind of article usually has a lot of likes behind it, but hardly any discussion. What’s the discussion about? The author has come to take the credit, or did you say his work was not good enough to offend people? From the point of view of spreading knowledge and promoting thinking, this kind of article has almost zero value.
• All kinds of texture into the article. Compared with the PPT map, there are various other pictures pasted into the article, the mind map directly pasted, the design diagram directly pasted, the flow chart directly pasted, the monitoring diagram directly pasted, a look down is not see a few lines of words. A good picture is indeed worth a thousand words, but that should only be the punchline, if the so-called article is full of pictures, you can not see the key point, also can not see the system. Words are very powerful, they can pull readers into the author’s thinking system, with logic and rhetoric to guide readers to think. By induction or derivation, knowledge which is otherwise hidden is revealed; Or eloquence, or humor, let the writer’s point of view shine. Writing should give full play to the power of words, not only pictures have structure, not only pictures can reflect thinking, on the contrary, because of their inaccuracy, many people often become a tool to cover up their lack of thinking.
• Correct nonsense into articles. Gobbledygaboo, often abstracting to great heights, starts with corporate strategy, and is full of the same phrases that have been attacked so much lately: “top-level design,” “low-level logic,” “enabling,” “grasping.” If you can’t find a clear logic, use 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0. The main version number plus 1 is better than the previous version number, and why the minor version number is never used, I don’t know. You won’t be able to tell what’s wrong with this article. All you know is that it’s worthless and you’ve just wasted a few minutes of your life.