Technical Writing Is Fun!

A long time ago, I wrote a Java virtual machine, but I haven’t programmed in Java in years and I haven’t ever written any Kotlin code.

So I really enjoyed reading a blog post that my colleague Marcus wrote recently about Java and Kotlin. I got to reactivate some old brain cells and see some bits of code in a new (to me) programming language.

Marcus detailed some of the small things we did to make Daily’s Android SDK as ergonomic as possible for both Java and Kotlin programmers.

Marcus’s blog post is a model of clean and focused technical writing. He covers six small topics and includes short but detailed examples for each. He sets up enough context at the beginning to make it clear why the post is worth reading, and in the conclusion he provides relevant links for readers who want to dive deeper.

We do a lot of technical writing at Daily, and we take the craft of technical writing seriously. I think that when we do technical writing right, we not only teach or demonstrate and document something well, but also that our individual voices shine through.

If you read our blog, you can often tell which of us wrote a particular post even without checking the byline. And sometimes that’s even true in our unsigned content, like our reference docs.

The writing style should never get in the way. (Though I’m often guilty of being way too discursive, especially in first drafts!)

But engineering is a creative endeavor and writing is a creative endeavor. We have a ton of fun writing about engineering, and we hope that comes through when people read what we write.

Today’s music is “Within Everything” from Danilo Pérez, John Patitucci and Brian Blade’s, “Children Of the Light” album. There’s also a wonderful version of this song on the Brian Blade and the Fellowship album “Body and Shadow,” with John Cowherd on the piano.