Technical writers produce product documents. A better title for technical writers is Documentarians. Most technical writers work in engineering alongside developers, managers, and designers. Technical tools are similar to software developer tools. Technical writers that use the docs-as-code method use the same tools as engineers. If you want to expand your technical writing skills, learn the right tools. In this blog post, I’ll share 6 tools I use for docs-as-code.
Text Editors
I use a text editor to write documentation. There are many editors out there. I use Vim. However, you can use visual studios or even Atom. Tech writers work with code examples and with code editors, you can easily structure and edit code examples.
Command line/ terminal
For Mac users, learn to use a terminal. It’s important to know how to navigate between directories and files. Once you learn, how to find files with specific words or lines, you won’t have to repeat your writing work.
Version control
Learn to use git/GitHub. You can use GitHub to directly modify, add and delete files. However, learning to use git will the docs-as-code processes easier.
Slack
Slack is important for communication. Start learning how to use “@” to get someone’s attention.
Jira
Jira is important for task tracking. Learn to use Jira to create and update tasks. Learn to write Jira status updates for every completed or in-progress task.