Refactoring: A developer's guide to writing well
summary
Teaches concrete tactics for better pull request write‑ups: open with a clear lead, assume readers know less, walk through triggers and fixes step‑by‑step, use Markdown headings, links and a screenshot or short GIF or 10–15s screencast, prefer active voice and concrete examples, fix garden‑path sentences and “zombie nouns,” and repeatedly refactor prose (like code) to tighter form — the author shows you can cut up to 50% of a PR while keeping meaning, cites experiments (80 students tap test, ~2.5% recognition) and concrete before/after edits.
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chapters (17)
- 0:00Writing well in software
- 1:35Clear writing importance
- 4:04Deliberate writing practice
- 6:27Reader-first writing
- 8:35Overcoming curse of knowledge
- 11:04Concrete examples beat abstractions
- 13:10Step-by-step explanations
- 15:16Refactoring writing
- 17:22Decluttering writing
- 21:17Fixing ambiguities
- 24:07Passive voice and zombie nouns
- 27:45Sentence flow and readability
- 30:14Paragraph structure
- 31:40Effective titles and headings
- 33:28Valuable pull requests
- 35:14Summary and benefits
- 35:59Q&A
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