The Essay in terms of Open Source

March 2006

The Essay in terms of Open Source

To get things rolling, this is not about licensing or copyright: it is about a fundamental flaw in modern writing and to that degree, this text is redundant. It has been said before and it will be reiterated here that an essay should not start with a thesis. No where in the software world does the idea of don't start with a solution apply more than in Open Source. There is a certain irony there in that when people seek to carve out a niche for themselves in their respective employ most often, and wrongly so, they start with a solution. An interesting parallel can be drawn within the context of I have a solution for your problem and all essays should start with the solution [1].

A Look at the Contemporary Essay

It is arguable that the essay was in the classic sense what it is supposed to be now. Many think that it instead followed a form more closely to that which is proposed here:

A Statement paragraph with a thesis wherein the solution is formed.
A variety of structured texts arguing the thesis...

Also known as .... a thesis paper. The exact misfortune of the essay is the thesis. A thesis paper is about arguing a point - granted a very complex point - an essay is not nor ever will be about arguing something - an essay was and should be two things:

Start with a question and arrive at an answer.
A discussion about the path to the conclusion.

In some contexts, an essay is a punishment. As children (and sometimes adults) we are taught to write an essay explaining our actions whether that be throwing spitballs or accidentally killing power to 1/5 of the east United States seaboard [2].

Other Angles: Troubleshooting

An electronic/electrical technician and to a degree systems analyst follow one simple rule - half split. For the sake of argument, the electronic/electrical technician and systems analyst will be called the troubleshooter [3].

The troubleshooter uses a classic binary search approach to finding problems, they simply measure at midpoints until they find the problem. What is especially interesting about the troubleshooter is their report. The report written by technicians is, in a sense, an essay.

The Technical Report

A technical report starts with a statement of the problem - essentially in very nice words what is broken. A good example is the classic power supply problems many troubleshooters faced in the late 1980s and early 1990s [4] and follow on with a body of scientific approach:

Statement of the problem
Hypothesis of the cause
Equipment used
Procedure (sub-texts here to allow for sub-procedures)
Actual conclusions from procedures/testing (this sometimes offsets misdiagnosis in the hypothesis section)
Solution
Parts and Materials List
Summary of the Work

Didn't know all of that did you? Believe it or not, even television repair technicians were beholden to that level of paperwork [5]. There is something about that format that should very much appeal to open source afficiandos - we start with a problem and do the best we can to document the procedure. In short order, there is a lot to be gained from the ground up approach to troubleshooting and to essays.

Now there is one contrast to essays, how an approach of basic problems applies and where the essay should logically go, but what about essays that do not really follow that format? What about essays that may result in not just simple comparisons but are real research? Then what and how do they fit in the new world of writing?

Footnotes

Thesis: Identify the problem; then find a solution.
True story, some poor fellow at a Delaware power station replaced a breaker that cut power to Delaware, Eastern Shore Maryland and Virginia in 1996.

This applies to many other careers such as plumbing and mechanics.

Arguably power supplies have plagued techs and hackers alike for generations.

This goes back to the United States and Korean War, these procedures were in place then and carried forward as far as 1989 to the best of my knowledge; they may have changed since.