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Documentation as Empathy
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ericholscher
October 03, 2015
Technology
1
250
Documentation as Empathy
Presentation from Open Source & Feelings.
ericholscher
October 03, 2015
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Transcript
Open Source & Feelings Seattle October 3, 2015 Documentation as
Empathy Eric Holscher (@ericholscher)
7 years ago
I was writing Perl for the Military
No • Documentation • Version Control • Tests
It all started with a PDF
Serendipity • Feb 20: http://ericholscher.com/blog/ 2008/feb/20/job-hunt/ • Feb 21: https://jacobian.org/writing/
sailing-on/
Documentation Culture
People don’t use projects that don’t have docs
I start writing docs • Django Kong • Django Test
Utils • Django Reusable App Docs
Jacob was a huge influence • 2009: https://jacobian.org/writing/great- documentation/ •
2011: http://pyvideo.org/video/403/ pycon-2011--writing-great-documentation
Created Read the Docs to reduce friction to writing &
publishing docs
From Tool to Understanding
Read the Docs was started in 2010
None
Started Write the Docs in 2013
Learned about a whole community of writers
None
Documentation is more than a tool
Technical writers know what makes so ware understandable
More communities are valuing documentation
Documentation as guilt
Coding & Testing have objective results
Documentation is a “so skill”
All programmers feel guilt about this
Leads to putting off writing docs
We need to lower the barriers in our industry to
writing documentation
Why it matters
Empathy
You don’t want a community full of people who don’t
read documentation
Documentation is Outreach
None
My path is the path of many others
“I can’t say I’m self taught. I’ve been taught by
the people who wrote the documentation” — @soulshake
Thanks writethedocs.org readthedocs.org