I've noticed this myself as well, with a similar timeframe. In college, right when I started coding, I would regularly type up a 8-10 page paper (for non-CS assignments), find 2 typos in spell check, and then just ... turn it in. No grammar snafus, no syntactic boo-boos, no problems at all.
Nowadays even a short email can't measure up.
I think it's because I edit code much more "interactively" than I used to write prose: editing a previous line as I think through the current one, deciding to change a variable name or edit a loop construct or what-have-you. That habit has transferred to writing prose, and I think it's for the worse.
Rather than having a complete sentence planned out before I start it, I find myself getting partway through and then thinking "huh, I'd rather rephrase the beginning like so". And so I change the beginning and go back to the end, but often a conjunction or phrase-transition gets messed up in the middle and I don't notice it.
Nowadays even a short email can't measure up.
I think it's because I edit code much more "interactively" than I used to write prose: editing a previous line as I think through the current one, deciding to change a variable name or edit a loop construct or what-have-you. That habit has transferred to writing prose, and I think it's for the worse.
Rather than having a complete sentence planned out before I start it, I find myself getting partway through and then thinking "huh, I'd rather rephrase the beginning like so". And so I change the beginning and go back to the end, but often a conjunction or phrase-transition gets messed up in the middle and I don't notice it.
EDIT: typo!