The similarities are pretty strong. In both cases, you need to express yourself so that the receiving party may understand you.
That said, human readers are a lot more welcoming and friendly consumers of your written work than computers. Positive feedback from computers is basically nonexistent.
Right now I am sitting in a train to southern Moravia, a long-time reader has invited me to a pork feast. That is not what computers do.
412 tests passed, 0 warnings, 0 errors.
That said, receiving an e-mail like "I spent a week reading all your books, PLEASE WRITE SOME MORE" is much more satisfying.
Human feedback on the code, design, usability, appearance, documentation, etc. is all very different from passing tests.
[0]:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSen0gefOrPWi6ZtEQ25... [1]:https://ljs.io/book.html
I started a crowdfunding project for the first book too, so that the printing and typesetting costs get covered. They were covered fully, so I knew that I won't dip into red numbers as a consequence. (This was a major worry of mine.)
I was still pretty nervous about acceptance, but it turned out OK. Whew.
When I thought about the similarities I came up with:
- both are about communicating your ideas clearly. For that you need good structure, and having a logical order.
- editing and revising is key. Also, compare with refactoring in coding.
- style - there are lots of ways you can have a unique style, even in programming.
More here: https://henrikwarne.com/2019/03/30/programming-math-or-writi...
EDIT: more about that on my blog if you care -> http://antirez.com/news/136