What do software writers have in common with other professional writers? What can we software developers learn from professional writers? This paper proposes a reflection on such topics using as a reference the book “Six Memos for the Next Millennium”, a posthumous work by the Italian novelist, editor, and literary critic Italo Calvino. A comparison is drawn between such work and the current principles ruling how software should be written and developed, and a claim is made that this is an area worth further exploration.