I think I agree with the central point here. I think the key phrase is “internal consistency”. This is also very true of programming. It’s difficult to build good software without having a handle on the subject matter (and/or a domain expert to get feedback from).
But often writing is also a process of discovery. Maybe you are trying to write something that hasn’t been written about before. This is like building software without a spec. You can still write well and be irrelevant, just as one can build great software upon bad assumptions and fail to sell it. This doesn’t make it bad writing in its own right, but it also may not be very useful to anyone. In my opinion both software and prose should be produced for a purpose.
Thus, if there’s no meaning to it, writing, like software, falls pretty flat.
But often writing is also a process of discovery. Maybe you are trying to write something that hasn’t been written about before. This is like building software without a spec. You can still write well and be irrelevant, just as one can build great software upon bad assumptions and fail to sell it. This doesn’t make it bad writing in its own right, but it also may not be very useful to anyone. In my opinion both software and prose should be produced for a purpose.
Thus, if there’s no meaning to it, writing, like software, falls pretty flat.