Talk

I feel like writing software documentation is like doing my taxes - help!

LanguageEnglish
Audience levelIntermediate
Elevator pitch

Documentation usually is not only the first but also the main point of contact people have with a software library. Therefore, it’s important to explain to users and potential contributors what it’s about and how it solves their problems. So let’s explore how to write awesome documentation!

Abstract

Software documentation itself is often regarded as “not so important” and writing documentation is often viewed as a chore that “just needs to be done”. Consequently, the documentation of software libraries tends to be neglected which results in low documentation quality. However, good software documentation is crucial for explaining which issues your library addresses and how it addresses them, for a positive user experience, and also for attracting and retaining contributors. In this talk you will learn how to write good software documentation, including which details your documentation needs to cover, how to create engagement with users and contributors, and how you can improve your code through documentation. Additionally, you will learn how to make writing software documentation more fun for yourself and other contributors, so you don’t feel like writing it is like doing your taxes - a boring and tedious task that you procrastinate on and prefer to outsource.

TagsCommunity, Documentation, Best Practice
Participant

Maren Westermann

Dr Maren Westermann works as a machine learning engineer at DB Systel GmbH and holds a PhD in environmental science. She is a self taught Pythonista, a member of the documentation and contributor experience team, respectively at the open source machine learning library scikit-learn, and a team member of the open source library Narwhals where she especially contributes documentation. She is also a co-organiser of and mentor at PyLadies Berlin where she hosts open source hack nights.