[HN Gopher] Docs for Developers: An Engineer's Field Guide to Te... ___________________________________________________________________ Docs for Developers: An Engineer's Field Guide to Technical Writing Author : jabajabadu Score : 68 points Date : 2021-10-21 17:42 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.apress.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.apress.com) | mactournier wrote: | You can read it with your ACM/O'Reilly subscription => | https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/docs-for-developers/978... | CameronBanga wrote: | Not sure if this is specific to this book, or Apress in general, | but it seems absurd that the eBook sells for $29.99, but you can | also buy each chapter individually for $29.95? | | The $29.99 is more than reasonable as a price for the book. But | who would be looking to spend the same price and receive only a | chapter? Seems almost like some sort of trick to hopefully get a | customer to unintentionally buy only a single chapter. | jkbr wrote: | It's a decoy. https://hstalks.com/t/3538/the-economist-a- | pricing-experimen... | kyleee wrote: | That's an awful website you've linked; pop ups on popups, | obscuring alerts, all overlaying the content. Do you mind | providing a short text comment about what a "decoy" is in | this context? | hanswesterbeek wrote: | Writing well is underrated. Too many people think they do it | well. Kind of like Dutch people and their command of the English | language. | mrwnmonm wrote: | Not very much off-topic, I wish someone makes | https://docusaurus.io as a service. | qbasic_forever wrote: | Docusaurus is a typical node-based SSG, you can easily run it | on Netlify, Vercel, or other similar sites. They even have docs | for how to do it: | https://docusaurus.io/docs/deployment#deploying-to-netlify | cratermoon wrote: | Perhaps GP doesn't want to set up and maintain their own | installation, which includes things like securing it and | keeping the installation up-to-date with security patches and | performance enhancements. It's completely reasonable to ask | if someone is willing to provide it as a service and do the | ops work in exchange for money. Saying "just install it here | and run it yourself" strikes me as putting the burden on | someone who has already expressed a desire to have someone | else take on the work. | qbasic_forever wrote: | I think you should look into what Netlify actually does-- | you seem to be misunderstanding it as a typical hosted | compute platform like EC2. With Netlify and similar service | it's actually more like AWS lambda but tightly integrated | into git/github. You push all your content source to github | and setup a webhook that notifies Netlify of any change. | Every time you commit Netlify will pull down your content, | run your static site generator (docusaurus) in an ephermal | container (like a lambda function) and then save the | resulting generated content/HTML to their hosting site. At | no time are you running or managing or operating an actual | server. | cratermoon wrote: | I saw this book mentioned on twitter, the author(s) were hyping | it. I'd love to buy the ebook but I don't want to have to | register or accept any TOS, I just want to give money and | download the epub format. Everywhere I've looked requires | creating an account. I see it's available on Amazon but... well, | I don't want Kindle format and also would prefer almost any other | seller. | macintux wrote: | I've been quite happy to see Apple Pay spreading online, in | part for that reason. | teeray wrote: | I do think clear writing is an indication of clear thinking, | which leads to clear programming. However, technical writing is a | real job with real work involved. To make developers write all | the documentation is the same management mentality some places | have about hiring "full-stack engineers." The places I've worked | at with truly excellent documentation had full-time technical | writers that collaborated with engineers. | cabbagehead wrote: | I really value working with a good technical writer, but you | can't always have that. I worked with one of the authors of | this book briefly many years ago. This book encapsulates a lot | of their experience, for writing developer docs, such as API | docs. | | Developer docs have a lot of conventions and it's useful to | have them written down. | | I've been applying the book's advice this week on my hosting | platform's docs. For example, there's good advice for an | information architecture, and the different content types to | have it in it. The book's an easy and relatively quick read. | kaycebasques wrote: | The flip side of this (from my ~8 years of experience as a | technical writer (TW)) is that once you hire a TW the natural | tendency is for engineers to relinquish all responsibility of | docs. The happy medium IMO is to put some responsibility for | docs in the engineering ladder (not as a nice-to-have for | promotion but a legit expectation) and to likewise have an | expectation in the TW ladder that they cannot do all the docs | themselves but rather need to develop systems/processes for | collaborating with engineers. Basically what you said in your | last sentence, just phrased differently. | ducharmdev wrote: | Interestingly, I think the exact same thing can happen with | QA work. One of our QAs told me about a past dev that | believed he was off the hook for QAing his own work, because | "that's the QA's job". Unsurprisingly, he didn't last very | long. | pc86 wrote: | Serious question, if you're going to hire people who are | great technical writers, why would you have software | developers (who are by definition not going to be as good TWs | as the "real" TWs) also do it? You wouldn't expect TWs to | dabble in the prod codebase. | 0xbadcafebee wrote: | If you have 1 TW and 50 devs, it will speed things up a lot | if the devs can at least churn out the rough drafts and the | TW can clean them up and link them together. | | Learning to write documentation (which is really just | _trying_ to write them over a long period of time) is a | skill that improves your overall communication skills. Devs | should want to improve those skills (as everyone should), | so they should want to write at least _some_ docs. | kaycebasques wrote: | > You wouldn't expect TWs to dabble in the prod codebase. | | I actually think you should expect TWs to dabble in the | prod codebase. At least for TWs writing docs for developer | products. To write the Chrome DevTools and Lighthouse docs | I frequently looked at the implementation to figure out how | things actually worked. From time to time someone would | file an issue on the docs and we would realize it's really | just a flaw in the product that can be relatively easily | fixed. I couldn't get engineers to prioritize the work but | if I put in a fix myself someone would review/approve it. | Rather than jump through hoops to update the docs to | reflect this quirk, it was often faster to just put in a | fix in the product itself. | | > if you're going to hire people who are great technical | writers, why would you have software developers (who are by | definition not going to be as good TWs as the "real" TWs) | also do it | | As mentioned in the last paragraph, a difference between | our viewpoints is that I do expect TWs to dabble in the | codebase, so perhaps it's not a stretch to imagine how your | business might improve if you also work in reverse | (engineers dabbling in docs). In practice, the real | "synergy" happens when engineers get into the doc creation | process early and often. For example, a writer might create | a very rough draft of a guide and ask the engineer to | review for technical accuracy only. (Edit: as dragonwriter | mentioned, it's often much more efficient for TWs to go to | engineers for technical information, rather than | deciphering it out of code, PRDs, etc.)). Or, have | engineers write the very rough draft themselves and have | the TW turn it into a polished document. Another approach | is when the engineer is very motivated to improve their | writing, and they take on writing a doc, and the TW works | with them step-by-step to polish it into a usable doc. My | hunch is that for any given org, you'll only have a | minority of engineers who want to improve their writing | like this, but when it happens it should be | prioritized/rewarded/encouraged. One area where it might | make sense for engineers to mostly own the docs is API | references. There should be an expectation that any changes | to the API should also require a doc update. Another useful | expectation would be to have engineers review docs after | making a change to the product and make sure the required | documentation update is at least logged as an issue | somewhere. Over time you tend to see engineers engaging | with TWs more substantially ("I was reviewing the doc for | change X and noticed that the overall organization of the | guide seems a bit off..."). | | I'm not arguing that engineers should take on all the docs | work themselves, just as I'm not arguing that TWs should | take on all major software development. But from my | experience there's a lot of benefit to having each role | systematically take on a bit of ownership of each other's | domain. | xboxnolifes wrote: | Because the developers are literally writing the source of | truth for the docs. They know the information best, even if | they aren't necessarily the best at presenting it or doing | all of it. They certainly are the best for forming the | rough draft of correct information. | dukeyukey wrote: | I can see the argument for the "Lead" model, where you have | a single technical writer who takes a tech-lead-like | responsibility for documentation and writing bit doesn't | necessarily do it all themselves. | dragonwriter wrote: | > Serious question, if you're going to hire people who are | great technical writers, why would you have software | developers (who are by definition not going to be as good | TWs as the "real" TWs) also do it? | | Software engineers are the SMEs whose knowledge TWs are | trying to crystallize into documentation; them being | disengaged from the documentation effort is the same | problem as business SMEs being disengaged from the software | development process. And, for much technical documentation, | developers of the software are also part of the target | audience, as one function the documentation serves is | knowledge preservation. | | Docs need tech SME and target audience engagement for the | same reason software needs business SME and user community | engagement. | clumsysmurf wrote: | I disagree. Documentation is about communication. How effective | is an architect without communicating architecture? | | If we consider a documentation system, maybe with guides, | references, etc ... at minimum I would expect developers to | clearly document APIs, database tables / schemas, contracts, | and protocols. | | A good example of developers not doing a good job here is the | Android reference Javadocs... and I don't think this is the | domain of technical writers. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-10-21 23:00 UTC)