How many times have you come across an awesome looking library or tool that you're keen to work with in your own project but can't even begin to understand how to use it? Programmers are great at creating amazing and cutting-edge code, but not always so good and explaining themselves, and I want to help. In this presentation I want to draw upon my experience in writing tutorials and technical documentation to help you write clear, concise and usable documentation for your own projects.

1. A Documentation
Crash Course
…for developers
LinuxCon, Berlin
@chrischinch

2. What’s one of the first
things you look at
with a new project?

3. • W
• W
• W
ho are you writing for?
hat are they trying to achieve?
hy are you writing this?
Youhavehopefullyansweredthesebeforedevelopment…

4. Assume nothing

5. Refine your
concept(s)

6. API docs are (not)
always enough

7. It’s not a manual

8. Interactivity

12. Language
Selected highlights in (mostly) English,
sorry…

13. Involve the reader

14. “function takes
parameter x and
returns value y”

15. “You can use
function to return
the value of y based
on x”

16. Passive vs Active

17. “function can be
used to return the
number of y based
on x”

18. “Holiday approval
will be notified in
due course”

19. Keep it short

20. “If I Had More
Time, I Would Have
Written a Shorter
Letter”
– Pascal, Locke, Franklin, Thoreau, Cicero, Wilson?

21. Structure

23. Consistency

24. Tools
In brief…

25. Format and editing

26. Management and
rendering

27. Testing, linting and
automating

28. Write your own

29. Want More?
• www.meetup.com/Write-The-Docs-
Berlin
• slack.writethedocs.org

30. –Me (maybe)
“Documentation
isn’t just for
developers”

31. Thank You!
Chris Ward
contentful.com
gregariousmammal.com
@chrischinch
I have stickers and merchandise!