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Discussion on: 3 Essential Components of Great Documentation

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bary822 profile image
Hiroto Fukui 🐶 • Edited

Most people coming to a project are total beginners in it, so writing for other beginners from a beginner's perspective is immensely valuable.

I often find myself unsure "where to start explaining from?".
People who come to read your document have diffent technical background, I never got confident I wrote documemt they all can find information they wanted to acknowledge.

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eli profile image
Eli Bierman

Yeah, it can be difficult to find where to start. I think examples and guides is usually a good place to start. If you or one other person has a question (even if it feels like a silly question) or isn't sure how to do something, you can basically guarantee that somebody else has the same question. Something is better than nothing, even if it's just adding a brief note.

At the beginning of a guide you can say where you expect them to already know, and what the guide will show them from there. That way people know if it's relevant to them before they read the whole thing.