Working in the startup community I’ve found a shocking number of engineers who were lit majors only a few years before they started coding and creating new technologies. At first this surprised me, as I assumed that lit majors went on to become writers and professors, while math and computing majors were the ones that went into computer engineering.
Until I realized that writers and engineers are really doing the same thing: creating.
I started thinking about Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory, and I realized that good writing has a lot of parallels with good business development. The theory states, in essence, that good writing shows only the tip of the iceberg: the events and hard facts are what should be explicitly stated in the story, while the supporting structure, themes, and symbolism should be out of sight. This makes the writing clean and simple, and enables the reader to discover the “meaning” himself, instead of having it explicitly stated.
Products (specifically enterprise software), like good writing, should be clear and simple: they should showcase only the most simple and user-friendly aspects, and the work and complexity that goes into the product to make it good and meaningful should be hidden below its surface simplicity.
Part of making good enterprise software is simplifying a complex idea. In the same way, Hemingway boiled down theories and symbols to a good story, and believed that the underlying thoughts and ideas that he put into the story would be apparent by their very omission. Likewise, the effort and complexity that goes into making a simple product shows through by the very fact of it’s not being a difficult product to use. Hemingway said of writing that it’s nobody’s business that one has to learn how to write; “let them think you were born that way.”
Of course, the ultimate difference is that literary critics try to uncover the the hidden part of the iceberg, while consumers of enterprise software don’t. But the process of creation is similar.
We all have a tendency to categorize people based on certain arbitrary distinctions (i.e. literary/artistic vs mathematical/practical). But in reality, creating anything that speaks to a certain audience is a process that is in certain ways standardized across mediums. Creating a good work of fiction means making the writing simple, easy, and the ideas complex (according to Hemingway, at least– I’m sure Joyce and Faulkner would disagree), while creating a good software means making it user-friendly and accessible to people across organizations.
In college, in job determination, and in personal identification, we ignore the fact that “to create” does not need to be separated into different majors or classified into different careers. There are principles that go into creating, and the ultimate goal is making a product that is so good that people enjoy consuming it.
A murderous dictator one said, quite aptly, that “The writer is the engineer of the human soul.” And, I would add (albeit less eloquently) that the engineer is the writer of the good product. And the engineer and the writer are ultimately both creators.
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