Developer documentation and API documentation
We support your software engineers
Your company develops innovative software products, APIs, platforms, and web services that software engineers can integrate into their own applications. Your products are smart, user-friendly, and simplify the lives of developers.
But your documentation is not keeping up with the rapid development of your products and services. Your support workload is too high, your customers are sending in a lot of support requests, and your software engineers are busy coding and are not spending enough time writing documentation.
Developer documentation and API documentation for your products
parson writes state-of-the art developer documentation and API documentation. This includes software architecture documentation, reference information, code documentation, tutorials, and use cases. We use the same tools and methods as the software engineers and integrate the documentation into the development process. We understand that developers dislike leaving their development environment. That’s why we bring the documentation to them. This is how we work.
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Developer documentation
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Better developer documentation for your products. This is how we work
- Analyze requirements. We work with you to analyze the needs of your target audiences, create an information architecture for your documentation, and create templates, for example in Markdown.
- Write developer documentation. In collaboration with your software engineers, we create the different parts of your developer documentation. We often use lightweight markup languages like AsciiDoc or Markdown and typically write in English with no translation involved.
- Docs-as-code approach. We work in your development environment, using tools such as issue tracking, version control, and continuous integration. We apply agile project management. Learn more about technical documentation with docs-as-code.
- Help select a system. We help you select and set up a publication pipeline for your documentation or a developer portal.
Learn more about developer documentation in our FAQs.
FAQs – Frequently asked questions about developer documentation
What is developer documentation?
Developer documentation is a part of software documentation and is intended for developers who want to integrate a system's features, interfaces, or services into their own applications. Developer documentation is typically written in lightweight markup languages such as Markdown or AsciiDoc, and published in English.
Who writes developer documentation: software engineers or technical communicators?
Software engineers have highly specialized knowledge. Therefore, documentation for this audience must reflect their skill level. Software engineers are excellent in implementing software but may find it hard to write clear and consistent documentation in English. Additionally, software engineers may not have enough time to write documentation. Technical communicators can help. For creating developer documentation, it’s best to have a team of software engineers and technical communicators working together.
What is docs-as-code?
Docs-as-Code is an approach to creating and delivering software documentation. Docs-as-code means that you treat documentation in the same way as the code. The docs-as-code approach combines two important aspects:
- The technical communication team uses the same tools as developers, such as integrated development environments (IDEs), version control systems, and continuous integration and delivery tools.
- Technical communicators use the same methods as the software engineers, such as agile project management and Scrum.
Learn more about technical documentation with docs-as-code.
Can I write developer documentation in a text editor, or do I need an authoring system?
You do not necessarily need an authoring system. With docs-as-code, you can create content as plain text in a text editor, typically in a lightweight markup language. The most common markup languages are Markdown, AsciiDoc, and reStructuredText. Microsoft's Visual Studio Code is a very common source-code editor.
How do I publish content with docs-as-code?
You write docs-as-code as plain text in a lightweight markup language. By separating content from presentation, you can create various output formats, such as XHTML, PDF, or DocBook XML, from the same source. Static website generators are widely used for generating HTML output. There are various website generators you can choose from, including Hugo, Jekyll, Gatsby, or Docusaurus. Antora is available for AsciiDoc.