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Subject:Re: Developer "Best Practices" content From:yehoshua paul <yehoshua -dot- p -at- technicalwriting -dot- com> To:"McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> Date:Mon, 11 Jun 2012 07:20:48 +0300
To me the answer is obvious: what do your customers say?
Have you ever gotten any feedback from your customers saying that they need
such a section, or that a Tips and Tricks page would help? Or do they agree
with you and think that such information is redundant for expert users like
them.
If you can find out what your readers want than that is the answer to your
question.
Disclaimer: This is my generic answer for these types of questions. I
personally do not document products where you supply SDK toolkits.
On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 2:24 AM, McLauchlan, Kevin <
Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> wrote:
> This is for list members who document software/hardware/firmware products
> where a customer might be expected to program an app that uses your
> product, or to integrate your product into a third-party application.
> In other words, with your product you supply a developer's toolkit.
>
> An inhabitant of a corner office has decided that our documentation lacks
> a page or section that would be Best Practices for programmers using our
> SDK.
>
> From my point of view, the entire SDK docs are what a customer/developer
> might want to know.
>
> Some years ago, that portion of the docs included a Tips and Tricks page
> until I was asked to remove portions that had become outdated. The whole
> thing went away.
>
> I see no need - and I think even corner-office would agree - for material
> that any programmer should already know or can find in an O'Reilly book (do
> they still publish those?), in a C# for Dummies or a Java for Dummies book
> or similar.
>
> Our headers and sample code are as standardized as we can make them, and
> include comments relevant to each major language that we support, so
> there's nothing additional to say about compile options, etc.
>
> What do y'all do on this topic?
>
>
> - k
>
>
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