I updated the Introduction to API documentation topic in my API doc course in a couple of significant ways. First, I expanded on the many different types of APIs out there (beyond REST). The list now native library APIs, SOAP APIs, RPC-based APIs, gRPC APIs, REST APIs, Voice Assistant APIs, and IoT APIs. I also incorporated research from Smartbear's impressive report called The State of API 2019, which is well worth a read on its own.
Each year I dive into my Google Analytics numbers and try to identify trends on my blog. In 2019, idratherbewriting.com had 1,974,524 page views, or about 5,409 page views a day (225 page views an hour). Traffic to the API doc site increased from 59% to 72%. Overall, this traffic suggests that maintaining a living documentation site that is continually updated might be more valuable than a continual stream of blog posts. I also reflect on my site's gender analytics, which has a slight trend towards more male readers.
In episode 26 of the Write the Docs podcast, we talk with Alan Bowman about the technical writing forum on Reddit as well as the WTD Slack channel, comparing and contrasting the two spaces. Topics covered include pros and cons of anonymity on the internet, transparency around sensitive or taboo topics (e.g., salary, masters programs, feelings of overwhelm), age/experience demographics for both communities, balancing honesty with professionalism, responding to posts from overwhelmed tech writers, dealing with recurring topics, strategies for participating, and more.
Around this time of year, I tend to look at tech comm trends for the previous and upcoming year. As I surveyed other tech comm posts about trends, two recent research efforts articles stand out as informative and research-based. Both of these articles were published in the December 2018 issue of Intercom: Saul Carliner's Tech Comm Census results, and Scott Abel's Benchmarking Survey results. Although informative, I wanted to see data more specific to developer documentation, a specialized niche within tech comm, so I decided to create my own survey.
Arnaud Lauret, also known as the API Handyman, recently published a book called The Design of Web APIs. In this podcast, I chat with Arnaud about his book, specifically exploring best practices for designing web APIs and focusing on the roles technical writers can play.
This past week my 7th-grade daughter started a programming component in her Algebra class. I was elated about this because, sadly, whenever she needs help with math, I'm usually not much help. My wife is much sharper with math and seems to remember everything, so she takes the lead. But with the switch into programming, I got called up from the dugout to help out. After I browsed the material assigned and required tasks, I started to feel sorry for my daughter, the teacher, and the whole school's attempt to jump into programming.
I'm giving an API Documentation Workshop in Los Angeles, California, on January 23, 2020. Details are below. You can register on Eventbrite here.
Last week I gave another API documentation workshop in downtown San Francisco. This was the second API doc workshop that I fully organized from start to finish myself, and overall it went pretty well. In this post, I want to reflect on a few of the things I learned.
It's been a while since I've written a post that has received so many negative comments as 4 Technical Writing Tests to Screen Candidates. Although many people did like the tests and found them interesting or fun, quite a few people had more negative reactions. As a result, I'm scrapping the idea of multiple choice tests as a way to filter candidates.
In an attempt to more easily filter technical writing candidates in the hiring process, I'm experimenting with a series of multiple-choice tests to "take the pulse" of any technical writing candidate to easily see whether a candidate is worth moving up to the next level in a hiring process (for example, moving from the resume pile to a phone screen).
In episode 25, we talk with Andrew Head, Ph.D. Candidate in Computer Science at UC Berkeley, about his research on how developers use API documentation. Specifically, we focused on a recent article he co-authored titled When Not to Comment: Questions and Tradeoffs with API Documentation for C++ Projects. During the podcast, we chat about the following: where developers look for information, how developers manage information in Google’s unique billion-line code base, when it's appropriate to just let developers read the code directly versus creating documentation, what kind of information developers look for in API documentation, the relevance of document generators such as Doxygen, and more. Andrew also talked about some projects he's working on to build interactive tools for developers to share code expertise.
One strategy for maintaining productivity when working on multiple projects is to try to complete one main task on each project each day. I have an illustration with arrows and blocks that helps keep me on track and aligns my focus in the long-term.
Although I've been doing tech writing for enough years that this issue shouldn't even be an issue, I'm still perplexed by best practices around document review. The right practices seem to vary from company to company, from toolset to toolset, from group to group. I've written previously about various review practices, but in this post, I'll reflect on Amazon's document review process.
Although specification documentation (which covers technical information about product details), doesn't involve much actual writing, it does require you to make many judgments about what information to include, how to gather and retrieve these details, and how to structure and present the information. These tasks are at the heart of technical communication.
Jacob Moses has a podcast called The Not-Boring Tech Writer. Recently, he interviewed me for an episode titled Skill #26: Getting Started with API Documentation.
