Write The Docs EU — Thomas Parisot — README Driven Development

I’m at Write The Docs EU today in Budapest and will post semi–unpolished notes from sessions throughout the day after each talk finishes.

Strive for simplicity so you can spend time doing the things you want to do.

Choose the tools.

• How do you install (blah)?
• How do you configure (blah)?

More bullet points:

• Strive to satisfaction, and love the work you do.
• Choose the most simple markup so you can quickly learn, write, and read.
• Answer these basic questions — who, what, why, where, when, and how?
• Display readme documentation alongside with example code.to provide context.
• Keep the document size shallow. “Trust your gut feelings.”
• Make the document crystal clear with ourself, team, and contributors.
• What is the intention of your code? How are people going to use it? Will it make sense?
• Fix bugs before writing the documentation.
• Code sketching is fast, straightforward, and easy. Quick to iterate.
• Content First. Technicity states back.
• Detect complexity by breaking your code.
• Suggestion: It’s better to split pull requests.
• Issue the intention by telling the code owners what you’d like to do.
• mdlint validates code in Markdown files.
• Bring everyone into the process by making the dialog easier. Improve code quality. Keep it simple.