TITLE: Write a Program, Not a Slide Deck
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: June 07, 2017  1:43 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
From
<A HREF="http://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2017/5/11/jpeg-your-ideas">
   Compress to Impress</A>,
on Jeff Bezos's knack for encoding important strategies in
concise, memorable form:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 As a hyper intelligent person, Jeff didn't want lossy
 compression or lazy thinking, he wanted the raw feed
 in a structured form, and so we all shifted to writing
 our arguments out as essays that he'd read silently in
 meetings.  Written language is a lossy format, too, but
 it has the advantage of being less forgiving of broken
 logic flows than slide decks.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Ask any intro CS student:  Even less forgiving of broken
logic than prose is the computer program.

Programs are not usually the most succinct way to express
an idea, but I'm often surprised by how little work it
takes to express an idea about a process in code.  When a
program is a viable medium for communicating an idea, it
provides value in many dimensions.  You can run a program,
which makes the code's meaning observable in its behavior.
A program lays bare logic and assumptions, making them
observable, too.  You can tinker with a program, looking
at variations and exploring their effects.

The next time you have an idea about a process, try to
express it in code.  A short bit prose may help, too.

None of this is intended to diminish the power of using
rhetorical strategies to communicate at scale and across
time, as described in the linked post.  It's well worth a
read.  From the outside looking in, Bezos seems to be a
remarkable leader.
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