Docs for Developers: An Engineer's Field Guide to Technical Writing

I'm a professional technical writer (what the authors refer to as a "documentarian"), with over 20 years of experience writing the types of documentation the authors describe.So, I think I'm qualified to say that Docs for Developers is one of the best software documentation books I've ever read! The authors cover all the important aspects of software documentation using a concise and clear style. The book is based on a friendly and amusing software scenario while sticking to real-life situations.I also want to point out Appendix B of the book, which contains a useful list of writing resources for developers. I agreed with every entry.Every technical writer I know has had great praise for this book, and I predict it will become an important part of the library of writers and developers alike.

Not worth the money

This is a must read for anyone with any kind of technical background whether that's developers (as called out in the title), product managers, or any of the other experts who go into making great software products for users.This really changed the way I thought about documentation and I've been doing it for ages.So I guess you really can teach an old doc new tricks!

En tant que développeur, j'ai un intérêt particulier pour écrire de la documentation, mais je n'ai jamais reçu de formation sur ce sujet. J'ai bien glané des conseils à droite à gauche durant mon expérience, mais rien de bien construit.Grâce à ce livre, j'ai pu repartir de zéro avec des bases solidement expliquées, un exemple réaliste suivi tout au long du livre, pleins d'astuces, et des d'explications sur des choses que je faisais sans vraiment comprendre pourquoi.De plus, je trouve la narration de ce livre très fluide, ce qui le rend agréable à lire.Si vous êtes développeur et ne savez pas comment construire la documentation de votre projet, ce livre est pour vous.

I ordered this book as our organisation is putting in lot of effort in documentation and hoped that this book would guide me in that. It might be useful for people who have not written much code or documentation before, but for me it didn't seem to offer anything new.It is shockingly thin, especially considering the line spacing and the font size. There doesn't seem to be any discussion or nuance, just do this followed by that.Usually I wouldn't have left a review, but I bought this book on the basis of the review, and could have done with a more critical review at the time. Would not recommend this book.