Technology: So easy your lawyer can do it

Technology is a language all its own, and OSS is no different. But as more people from more backgrounds jump into open source, they can quickly become alienated by the specificity of jargon. How, then, do we explain powerful technologies to the everyday person without misleading them? Zoe Landon explains why it takes strong clarity, clever metaphors, and a bit of Shakespeare.

The call is going out in America—from community leaders, businesspeople, and even the president—for more people to learn how to code. It’s a valiant goal. But it can be sabotaged by our own language. Terms such as “prototypical inheritance” and “thunks” can be intimidating to newcomers, even when the ideas behind them aren’t actually all that unfamiliar. As the people working within the bubble of tech jargon, we have both the opportunity and the duty to help the growing ranks of developers and OSS contributors understand just what exactly we’re on about. Doing so isn’t hard, but it does require a step back to understand the audience, as well as a bit of clever thinking. Zoe Landon explains some tricks from the world of creative writing that help achieve this goal. Zoe explores familiar structures like metaphor and allusion as well as ideas pulled from novelists about writing for clarity and familiarity, primarily focusing on when and how to use them to their best effect. With a little bit of effort, you’ll not only understand your own work and community better but also be able to explain it clearly to even the most technophobic lawyer.