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> Documenting software is extremely difficult. People go to university to learn to become technical writers, spending thousands of dollars, and several years of
by kartan 9y ago
> Documenting software is extremely difficult. People go to university to learn to become technical writers, spending thousands of dollars, and several years of their life. It’s not really reasonable to expect every developer to know how to do it, and do it well.
This is the answer. Software developers are bad doctors, and bad writers, and bad musicians, ... Why do people expect that software developers should have so many other professional skills? The time when your developer designed, implemented and written content for your corporate web is long gone. But we still expect them to be good technical writers.
In the companies I have worked for, we have technical writers that help to write organized, consistent complete documentation. And it is a full time job.
- ljk 9y ago> Why do people expect that software developers should have so many other professional skills? to cut cost most likely
- bioapparatus 9y agothough I share your cynicism, this could easily be reversed as "people value software developers that can also do other stuff good too."
- CM30 9y agoMaybe it's a matter of having resources to move to other types of work where necessarily. After all, if your developer can write documentation and design layouts in Photoshop, you can tell him/her to move to something else when that work needs doing rather than have him sitting around twiddling his/her thumbs while nothing is happening. I mean, not every company has enough work to keep a developer, technical writer or marketer going full time. Especially not if their product range is limited or like an agency they mostly flutter from random project to random project. Less optimistically... yeah, it's probably just money and resources. A developer who can design a website layout, write documentation and get it ranking in Google is cheaper than four people doing one job each.