On writing, collaboration and software development

Back in college, as an English Literature major with a minor in journalism, most of my writing classes involved workshopping: sharing pieces of writing with the entire class or with a small group of classmates so we could constructively critique each other's writing in the hopes of making each piece stronger and better.While it's incredibly nerve-wracking (OK, sometimes downright painful) to share something of your own creation with others, we all quickly learned how valuable those objective ins