Making World-class Docs Takes Effort - Daniel Stenberg

This resource first appeared in issue #91 on 10 Sep 2021 and has tags Managing A Team: Documentation/Writing, Technical Leadership: Other

Making World-class Docs Takes Effort - Daniel Stenberg

Documentation is incredibly important for a product’s adoption and use - whether the tool is software, data products, systems, or (increasingly) a combination of the three. It takes a lot of work, but that work pays off later with more adoption and less support effort per user.

Stenberg highlights what he’s found to be important for documentation: that it be:

• Stored with the code, for convenience and so updates are kept in sync, but
• Not generated from the code
• Filled with as many examples as possible
• Documenting every interface
• Easily accessible and browsed, and
• Easy to contribute to.

Stenberg then describes work he’s doing to improve the documentation of curl/libcurl, including constantly iterating, adding examples, and generating some simple automated checks for consistency and making sure cross-references stay current.