RE: respect for the button slogan

Subject: RE: respect for the button slogan
From: "Swallow, William" <WSwallow -at- courion -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2001 15:20:32 -0400

Just one nugget to share... Difficult to code doesn't have to translate to
difficult to document. Depends on the audience and the level at which they
need to understand. Even admins may only need to know that "application now
supports this new functionality". It could have taken 2 years of development
to get to that new functionality, but if it's all core processing, then the
admin and end user docs should be minimally to moderately affected. Now if
you're documenting CODE, you may have some work cut out for you.

*****************
BILL SWALLOW
Technical Writer
C O U R I O N C O R P O R A T I O N
1881 Worcester Road
Framingham, Mass. 01701
T E L * 508-879-8400 x316
F A X * 508-879-8500
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-----Original Message-----
Well, now I understood the "it" in "If it was hard to write, it should
be hard to understand." to refer to the PROGRAM the programmer has
written, and not the documentation. Read that way it makes a bit more
sense--programmers sweat blood getting programs coded, they want users
to have an equally intense (or flat-out difficult) time using the
program. The way I interpreted it, I though it was pretty funny, having
worked with a few developers who had the attitude that they just made
the program work--it was up to the users (and the technical writer) to
figure out HOW it worked.

And that sig line is right up there with the one someone else on the
list was using from About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design,
about why developers shouldn't be allowed to do interface design, as
their choices will relate less to good design and more to ease-of-coding
(the actual quote is much more eloquent). Both sig line have that ring
of undeniable truth.

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