Thinking of Documentation as Code

Evan GoerYUIConf 2013

Frontend Engineer @ Intuit

And much more…

YUI 3 Cookbook Author

Thinking of Documentation as Code

Or:

Improve Your Documentation With This One Weird Old Tip

Invented by a San Jose dad!(okay no, not really)

A Fable

The Magical Unit Test Repository

Why do you tell me this when you know I will kill you for it?

“To first order, software documentation is like code.”

The radical notion thatDocumentation is part of your project

Just like your source code and build scripts

and unit tests and everything else

Documentation lives in your repo(just like code!)

Documentation source is plain text(just like code!)

Code is very expensive(documentation even more so)

Corollary of “Docs are expensive”:Given a choice between writing lots

of docs or fixing your code,fix your code.

Technical Documentation on the Wiki:Threat or Menace?

Don’t Allow User Comments on Documentation Pages

Separation of ConcernsWhat, How, and Why

DRY Documentation

Documentation Build Targets: HTML, EPUB, PDF, TROFF…

Contact Info: evan@goer.org || @evangoer

Thank You!