Life & Wisdom Quote by Adam Osborne

Osborne’s line lands because it flips a comforting assumption: that expertise automatically translates into clarity. In early personal computing, the “computer guy” was often the high priest guarding a temple of jargon, and documentation was treated like an afterthought - a technical appendix for insiders, not a bridge for newcomers. Osborne is warning that the closest person to the machine can be the farthest from the user.

The intent is practical, almost managerial: don’t staff communication with the deepest specialist just because they have the most knowledge. The subtext is sharper. Expertise breeds blind spots. Once you’ve internalized a system, you stop noticing the steps that confuse beginners, and you start narrating from the middle. That’s how documentation becomes a maze of implied context: “just compile,” “set your PATH,” “obvious,” “simply.” It’s not malice; it’s amnesia.

Coming from Osborne - a key figure in the early microcomputer boom - the quote reads like product-world realism. In that era, computing was leaping from hobbyist clubs to offices and homes, and the winners weren’t only the machines with better specs; they were the ones people could actually use. Documentation becomes a cultural battlefield: do you design for belonging or for gatekeeping? Osborne’s punchline is really about empathy as a technical advantage. The best documentation is written by someone fluent enough to be accurate, but distant enough from the inner circle to remember what confusion feels like - and to respect it.