Sarah Simpers
MongoDB
Use What You've Got: How Incremental Updates to our Automated CLI Docs Improve t
About the Talk:
MongoDB's Atlas CLI (which is built on the Atlas Admin API) uses the open-source cobra CLI framework. We generate our command reference documentation from the code. Over the past two years, we have made several incremental improvements to our docs that have boosted use of the CLI among external developers and made it easier for internal developers to contribute to documentation -- all by leveraging existing CLI code. These improvements include:
- Adding over 200 auto-updating commands in our Atlas docs, which ensure the commands in the Atlas docs stay updated and increased visibility of the CLI
- Making it possible for internal developers to add multiple examples to the code that show as examples in the command reference
- Adding outputs to the command reference that leverage existing variables defined in the code
This talk will explore how incremental changes have resulted in huge benefits for our docs, which enable success of both internal developers (contributing to docs) and external developers (reading the docs).
About the Speaker:
Sarah is a Senior Technical Writer at MongoDB. With over eight years in tech writing experience (and more in database and IT experience), She's done a little of everything.She's contributed to proposals that won billions of dollars in contracts with the federal government. She's written software documentation for startups that customers rave about. She's managed other writers as a technical writer team lead, and she's been the lone writer for 40 engineers. But no matter what she is doing, she is happiest if she is writing about a product she can get behind. If loves it, she can convince others to love it too, and she’ll write engaging documentation you actually want to read.
