Re: Technical Writers and Programming Skills

Subject: Re: Technical Writers and Programming Skills
From: joanne grey <j_grey -at- WRITEANGLES -dot- COM>
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 17:56:15 -0700

Pete Kloppenburg wrote:
>
> Mike Collier asked about tech writers with programming skills.
>
> I work where I have limited access to the developers, and I work mostly from
> the header files to their C code and their own internal documentation. As you
> can imagine, this is rather sketchy at best, and has little to do with our end users.

I did several API reference guides for programmers using the same
resources - the header file, and a spec written on a napkin. Once, I
even got a diagram. :-) Any code that I could puzzle through made all
the difference. I never had to write code samples, but I wish I had -
there's nothing quite like doing.

> programming skills are invaluable (I'll say the word without shame) to
> tech writers. Even in products which are not aimed at programmers,

Agreed. Just the knowledge of how it all goes together, plus the ability
of the engineer to explain it in technical terms, has been very useful.


________________________________________________________
Joanne Grey finally speaking for the company
Principal Technical Writer j_grey -at- writeangles -dot- com
Write Angles http://www.writeangles.com

"If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, their brains
start working." -Ford Prefect

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