Strategy, Michael Porter wrote, is choosing what not to do. Now, the problem with knowledge work such as the one tech writers carry out is that it’s full of things that seem to require equally important, time-consuming decisions. While engaging in lengthy disquisitions might be alluring, endlessly combing the Zen garden of theory doesn’t solve the basic problem of the docs hierarchy of needs, which is writing the damn docs and making sure they’re accurate and useful.| passo.uno
I think all technical writers, at some point or another, feel the urge to base their work on something more systematic than “it’s just the way folks documented stuff since forever”. Toolkits and frameworks provide content types, which is immensely valuable when you know what you want to write, but starting from there is like buying a hammer without knowing that half of the work you’ll do is turning screws. As I find the lack of deeper conversation around this topic rather unsettling, ...| passo.uno
For the first time since I started this blog, I’m writing some predictions on software technical writing for next year. Not because I think they’ll be accurate—they never are—but because the exercise reveals what we’re concerned about and what we hope to tackle. Predictions are to-do lists in disguise: they highlight challenges we’re determined to overcome. Plus, they’re fun to write. So here are my predictions for 2025, knowing I’ll enjoy being proven wrong.| passo.uno
I’ve recently started a new job as a documentation engineer. While my work is largely the same as that of a technical writer, the sound and semantics of my new job title gave me some pause and made me think about what it really means to be doing docs-as-code. To say that it’s about writing documentation using the same tools and methods as software developers is correct, but fails to acknowledge the full consequences of the fact. Most descriptions of docs-as-code are naive because they sto...| passo.uno
What does it mean to fail as a technical writer? How does one get up again? How can we correct course and rekindle the fire that helped us power through rejections, layoffs, and ostracism? Is there any switch we can toggle so that folks understand what it is that we do and provide us with the resources we need in order to contribute a verse? I’ve been thinking about all this since I became a tech writer; now I want to share some of those thoughts with you.| passo.uno
A month ago, Lana Novikova asked me to imagine the future of software documentation. What will software technical writing look like in, say, 2049, when our profession will be a century old? Will we be writing markup in git repositories or use ÜberDITA in space? Will our job still exist? I’ve put my futurist hat on to picture the shape of our profession 25 years from now. Buckle up!| passo.uno
Some technical writers in my network are genuinely worried about their professional future in the AI age. Will large language models take my job, they wonder. Are we going to be replaced by GPT, they ask in meetups and community forums. My short answer is “No”. My longer answer is “No, unless you reject the benefits of LLMs”. For my complete answer, keep reading this post.| passo.uno