On Tue, 9 Jun 1998, Pam Blythe wrote:

> However,
> I've found I'm not normal - most programmers can't compose an English
> sentence to save their lives.

One friend of mine (the same one who was recently married in Philadelphia)
is a longtime systems programmer and a brilliant writer of English prose.
He has a simple rule of thumb: In general,

   People who graduated from high school before 1975 can write.
   People who graduated from high school after 1975 can't write.

Since most programmers are in the second category, he would say, it's no
surprise that they have trouble writing English.

Quite possibly he picked that particular year since he himself graduated
from high school *in* 1975.

I don't exactly endorse this theory, but it does have some predictive
power in my experience.

                             Larry Kestenbaum