Stephen Downes

This article is kind of weird because it's written by Jim Highsmith and appears on Martin Fowler's website and says things like, "Martin Fowler writes this way. His best pieces don't build to the conclusion, they open with it," etc. Looking beyond that, the article purports to name something that hasn't been named, 'practitioner voice', that is, writing done by people who actually do the thing (which arguably forms the majority of the content in my newsletter). It's not a new idea - here's a reference to it from 2019. Here's one from 2024. And it doesn't follow any single form, much less the model proposed here ("Academic writing builds to the claim. Thought leadership makes the claim and explains it. Practitioner Voice starts with the claim..."). There isn't so much a 'claim' in practitioner writing as an 'experience'. Academics then 'discover' that experience, and influencers copy it and try to make it popular.