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by GarnetFloride 39 days ago
My manager just told me that after 12 years of trying to get one of the founders to understand the difference between dev docs and user docs, they tried getting Claude to do it and he finally got it that they are different. He'd been saying this whole time that customer could just read the dev docs. If they could they wouldn't need our software.
2 comments
zenoprax 39 days ago
How firm is the boundary between a dev doc and a user doc in your opinion? I have found that the overlap can be quite large if the users are also technically proficient. Right now I'm trying to balance "how X works so you can use the app better" with "how X works so you can contribute or build your own plugin". DeepWiki really helps as a backstop for anything not already covered though it's not without its own caveats of course.
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PetitPrince 39 days ago
Not OP but I think you have the right intuition in making a difference between using the app / contribute to the app. You may want to read https://diataxis.fr/ which elaborate on this idea and add another dimension (action / cognition) to this.
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zenoprax 39 days ago
I appreciate the suggestion but that's what I've been using! :D

In fact, the only area I've been struggling with are "Concepts" because they have less clear boundaries for the right amount of detail.

Here is what I've been working on: https://github.com/super-productivity/super-productivity/wik...

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GarnetFloride 35 days ago
In general, I am talking about non-technical or technical in a different field.

In my case right now, our users are civil engineers, they just want to be able to use our software to model the environment. They really don't want to become an expert programmer on top of that.

They just want to be able to build their thing, like a bridge, so they can make money, and plug numbers into our software to do that.

It's like making a hammer, the documentation needed for forging a hammer out of steel will be radically different from using the hammer to build a house or doing ortho surgery.

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ElevenLathe 39 days ago
I see variations on this too. It's fascinating that there is a class of people who were uninterested in expressive, natural language communication when it was only a way to speak to other people, but who are now super interested in it because it is a way to speak to machines. I worry about the wellbeing of these people -- they seem like prime candidates to slide into AI-induced psychosis.
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