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John,
It's not at all about the way you write your docs. AFAIK,
you don't usually write API docs or any other docs that
target a programmer audience. You posted an assumption
about a programmer audience that I saw fit to comment on.
That's all. Plain and simple.
"The Inmates..." is a really good book. I read it several
years ago. And while I've never found a shop that takes the
creation of personae seriously, I think it's a great tool
to provide focus to the dev and writing teams.
But I think the real nugget that we can all take away here
is that the only generalization you can make is that all
audiences are alike in their desire to get from A to Z,
even programmers. And while we can find exceptions (those
who want to learn the concepts first) in all audiences, we
can't rely on all members of any audience to be willing to
wade thru all the cerebral stuff before they roll up their
sleeves.
My two cents -- please don't take it personally! ;-)
-swg
>
> From: "John Posada" <JPosada -at- isogon -dot- com>
> Understand that for the last three days, I've been reading "The Inmates
> are Running the Asylum". If you read it, you see where my head is
> currently at.
...and...
> How did this morph into how I write my docs? I thought I was simply
> giving my opinion on whether someone who recycles code because they
> don't know the craft of writing code could be called a programmer...as
> in "One who writes computer programs".
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