Tom Sumner's Lecture

Guest speakers are always very interesting because we get to hear how technical writing is applicable in different facets of the real world. What struck me most was the fact that Tom edits computer science books but is not an expert in the field. I was very surprised to hear that editors do not have to know the material to be effective editors. I think it would have been beneficial to have a non-computer-science person edit the books that were used during my initial training. Tom mentioned that sometimes people are able to write their own book and get it published without editing if they are the professor of the class that requires the book. I believe this is what happened in my experience. The books I was assigned for Comp-Sci at the University of Colorado in 1999 were all written by a professor at that school. Which explains why they didn't make any sense at all. It was basically just a collection of excerpts from computer programs with virtually no explanation as to what it did or why. It was fun to hear Tom's perspective on it and get a little confirmation that I was not fully insane.

Another thing I found very interesting was the idea that people can publish their own work through Amazon. It is exciting that anyone can get published and really opens up the possibility that I could be published if I felt so inclined. It is a little concerning however, that ANYONE could publish their work and the market will become saturated with books written by people like me. Which quite frankly is disturbing because I would most likely write crap. It seems like it would become extremely difficult to weed out anything that was worth reading from the mass of amateur attempts at greatness.