I’m a terrible user of documentation. I tend to consume docs in a hurry, reading diagonally, Control+Fing my way to things. I generally mistreat the interface of docs until I obtain something resembling an answer. I do this because I’ve little time and I need to fix issues fast. I love examples I can copy and paste. I’ve little patience for verbose documentation and even less for docs that look like they were written without care or skill. I’m not only bothered by inaccuracy, but also...| passo.uno
Just around the time I was complaining about the scarcity of books on technical writing, I got a copy of Technical Writing for Software Developers by Chris Chinchilla, a regular of the Write the Docs community. Delighted by the chance of reading a book from one of the sharpest pens in technical writing, I set aside some time to read through the nine chapters and write a review. The book taught me little I didn’t already know – Chris and I use the same tools and methods.| passo.uno
I’m not only a technical writer and an avid collector of old manuals: I’m also a gamer. One of the bits I always enjoyed about video games were the manuals, from the slim booklets that accompanied arcade games to the hefty guides that helped build virtual worlds in our heads while we waited for a few kilobytes to load in memory. Those manuals still hold valuable lessons for the software documentation we write today.| passo.uno