Artisan Writing

So what do I mean by artisan writing? I mean the ability to craft words into explaining complex technical concepts in simple, ordinary language that allows anyone from a programmer to an end user to understand what they are reading and to “get it” conceptually. I know that one of the most rewarding technical writing experiences I have ever had was writing documentation for a program I was implementing based on a specific and proprietary algorithm. Someone else needed to re-implement the program in another language and he did so without even looking at my code, just reading the documentation including some diagrams describing the different phases of the algorithm. It worked perfectly and I was delighted. I have had similar experiences writing end user documentation.  I’m going to keep this week’s post a little short because I’m a bit ill but be sure to come back next week for more about technical documentation and artisan writing!

–Andy