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ISTC article on developer documentation trends

by Tom Johnson on Aug 31, 2020
categories: api-doc api-doc-site-updates

I recently wrote an article for the Institute of Scientific Technical Communicators (ISTC) magazine Communicator called 'Developer documentation trends: How developer documentation trends differ from general technical communication trends.' This article provides the official writeup and analysis from the developer documentation survey that I conducted at the beginning of the year.

You can read the ISTC article in PDF form here:

ISTC article on developer documentation trends

I also added an HTML version on my API doc course here: Developer documentation trends — survey results. This writeup is the official presentation and analysis of the data.

Note that I’ve given two presentations that discuss the results as well:

A few people have asked whether I’ll be doing another survey in the future to see how trends evolve from the ones surveyed here. That might be a good idea. This space changes rather quickly, so perhaps I’ll follow up in 2022.

About Tom Johnson

Tom Johnson

I'm a technical writer / API doc specialist based in the Seattle area. In this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, visual communication, information architecture, writing techniques, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation if you're looking for more info about that. If you're a technical writer and want to keep on top of the latest trends in the field, be sure to subscribe to email updates below. You can also learn more about me or contact me. Finally, note that the opinions I express on my blog are my own points of view, not that of my employer.