One time when I was at The New York Times an AI entrepreneur said he was jealous of me. Why?

“I only program machines to do things,” he said. “You program people.”

That was a jarring compliment. At first I was tempted to brush off as weird nerd flattery. He and I had known each other a long time, though, and he was both clever and straightforward. He wasn’t trying to sell me anything that day. Even if he was buttering me up, I eventually realized, he wasn’t entirely wrong.

All effective writing, all good communication, is persuasive. Which is to say it is intended to move you, and change you in some way. At the most banal level, you write a shopping so that someone remembers to get carrots on their way home. Great poetry and great religious texts may want to affirm your life, or change it utterly. I’ve been married for over three decades, and more than anything it’s due to perhaps a dozen letters I exchanged in 1987.

In another sense, writing is nothing like programming, since the recipient of the code has both history and the free will to reject what you say. This is good, though is not an unalloyed positive, since it’s harder to make people change their minds in the face of better facts than it should be. The human machine is endlessly complex, which is one of many reasons why even the most skillful writer’s task of “programming” is uncertain.

That doesn’t mean it lacks best practices. Know some basic grammar, and learn from your mistakes. Enjoy and cultivate language. Above all, know your audience and address them in the best way possible. Here are a few ways that applies to writing for and about technology companies (great writers in fiction and nonfiction know their audience too, in different ways, but you’re probably not here for that.)

You can’t move someone if you don’t know where they are in the first place. Wherever that is, you should cultivate empathy for their current situation and way of seeing (this is a useful practice generally, but here it’s a professional necessity.) Respect, even enjoy, ways it’s not like your way.

Start forming your story from the things they know. If you’re introducing a new concept or product, seek parallels with things they already know about. Use evidence that matters to them. If you’re working with engineers who are proud of their achievements, or executives keen to make a sale, don’t let them talk inside their bubble – the only thing that matters is the thing that matters to the reader (and that way, both sides can be served.) Judicious use of humor, probably well inside the piece, can be a type of courage, and thus admirable.

Key programing tip: If you’re telling them about something new, you’re telling them about the future. Give them a way of seeing how they’ll live in it, hopefully better than they’re living now.