Effective Software Documentation with Everett Griffiths - EMx 180

Bad documentation wastes time, costs real money, and makes developers unproductive.  Documentation might be bad because it is flat-out wrong (typos, references to an older version, etc.), but more often documentation is bad when it fails to tell us what we need to know.  Don’t let all your hard work go to waste because you failed to communicate what your software is or how to use it.  Today on the show, Everett Griffiths shares his insights on how to approach documentation simply and effectively.

In this episode…

1. What got you into documentation?  
2. Examples, examples, examples
3. Having an effective feedback loop
4. Key word arguments
5. Coding is easy, but documentation is hard
6. Using mermaid charts
7. Open sourcing your software
8. Clean code and clean infrastructure 
9. Simplifying coding environments 

Sponsors

• Top End Devs
• Coaching | Top End Devs

Links

• WTFM: Writing Effective Software Documentation
• Inspecting Ecto Schemas with Elixir | by Everett Griffiths | Medium 1
• Enhancing Elixir Documentation with Mermaid Charts | by Everett Griffiths | Medium 1
• Coding is Easy; Communication is Hard | by Everett Griffiths | Medium 1
• LinkedIn: Everett Griffiths
• Twitter: @fireproofsocks

Picks

• Adi- Grafana OnCall
• Allen- MJML - The Responsive Email Framework
• Everett- Paasaa - Paasaa v0.6.0
• Everett- The Guns of August: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Classic About the Outbreak of World War I