Ethical Software by Alex Bunardzic

I’ve been enjoying the writings of Kathy Sierra and Amy Hoy for quite some time now. For example, reading the latest edition of Objective View and stumbling upon Amy Hoy’s article “Ruby’s a Gem” made me smile from ear to ear.

I simply couldn’t wipe an idiotic grin off my face — her writing is that good!

Kathy Sierra as well, that woman is no slouch either. I follow her blog very closely, and she almost always manages to put a smile on my face.

So I now find myself in a situation where I tend to prefer female writers. What is it about female writers that make them that much more enjoyable to read?

Male Counterparts?

I must admit that I’m having a bit of a hard time thinking of a male writer that could approach the impact of Amy’s and Kathy’s writing on me. The first author that comes to mind is Paul Graham; however, it’s not so much that I like his writing style, as I simply love many of his ideas. But his writing doesn’t really come close to the bounciness one experiences while reading Amy’s stuff.

I honestly can’t think of any other male candidates. Non-fiction male writers seem to suffer from a particular brand of dryness in their writing, something that Kathy and Amy (and some other female writers as well) thankfully lack.

So what is it that I admire so much in Amy’s style, for example? Well, there is this particular kind of bounciness that keeps the proceedings dance around the subject gracefully. I can’t put it in words (probably because I’m a male writer:-), but the thing I appreciate in particular is how that liveliness never lets up. Other notable writers usually tend to open their chapters in a lively fashion, but then quickly slide downwards into the dry, bureaucratic tone. Not so with Amy — she keeps going in her cheerful way to the bitter end.

One of the typical examples that illustrate this point would be Dave Thomas and David Heinemeier Hansson’s Agile Web Development with Rails book. Each chapter starts great, with exemplary nuggets of killer writing style, and then quickly runs out of steam and deteriorates into the usual drone voice.

This is why I can’t wait to lay my hands on Amy’s upcoming book (don’t have the details yet). I just want to see if it would be possible to keep the head of steam going throughout the entire book.