Novels and programs (was: Re: [plt-scheme] Prereqs for robotic programming

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 10:23:38AM -0600, Grant Rettke wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 9:22 AM,  <hendrik at topoi.pooq.com> wrote:
> > Authors aren't called "novel designers".
> 
> You can't be a successful author without first being a successful
> novel designer, though; at least if you are writing novels.

There are authors who cannot write from an outline.  FOr them, the novel 
is what they discover along the way while they are writing, and then 
they have a *huge* revision job when they finish the first draft.

Others cannot write without an outline.

It has been said that when writing a mystery novel, it's a huge 
advantage for the author to know whodunit.

But other writers confess that they only thing they can use to motivate 
themselves is that they want to find out whodunit.  Once they know that, 
it becomes excricuatingly hard to commit words to paper.

The thing is, there are good writers in both camps.

Are there similar phenomena in computer programming?

-- hendrik