TITLE: Don't Say "Straightforward" So Often, Obviously
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: August 11, 2017  9:08 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:
This bullet point from @jessitron's
<A HREF="http://blog.jessitron.com/2017/06/the-most-productive-circumstances-for.html">
   Hyperproductive Development</A>
really connected with me:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 As the host symbiont who lives and breathes the system:
 strike the words "just", "easy", "obvious", "simple",
 and "straightforward" from your vocabulary.  These
 words are contextual, and no other human shares your
 context.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

My first experience coming to grips with my use of these words
was not in software development, but in the classroom.
"Obvious" has never been a big part of my vocabulary, but I
started to notice a few years ago how often I said "just",
"easy", and "simple" in class and wrote them in my lecture
notes.  Since then, I have worked hard to cut back sharply on
my uses of these minimizers in both spoken and written
interactions with my students.  I am not always successful, of
course, but I am more aware now and frequently catch myself
before speaking, or in the act of writing.

I find that I still use "straightforward" quite often these days.
Often, I use it to express contrast explicitly, something to the
effect, "This won't necessarily be easy, but at least it's
straightforward."  By this I mean that some problem or task may
require hard work, but at least the steps they need to perform
should be clear.  I wonder now, though, whether students always
take it this way, even when expressed explicitly.  Maybe they
hear me minimizing the task head, not putting the challenge they
face into context.

Used habitually, even with good intentions, a word like
"straightforward" can become a crutch, a substitute minimizer.
It lets me to be lazy when I try to summarize a process or to
encourage students when things get difficult.  I'm going to try
this fall to be more sensitive to my use of "straightforward"
and see if I can't find a better way in most situations.

As for the blog post that prompted this reflection,
<A HREF="http://blog.jessitron.com/2017/06/the-most-productive-circumstances-for.html">
   Hyperproductive Development</A>
summarizes as effectively as anything I've read the truth behind
the idea that some programmers are so much more effective than
others: "it isn't the developers, so much as the situation".
It's a good piece, well worth a quick read.
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