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If we can also apply this to network engineers, that would be awesome. No more waiting 2 weeks for a firewall rule. But how many places actually have tech writers these days.. mostly devs will be asked to write documenation.
You guys had tech writers? I write everything myself—from the code to the reports to the policies to the deployment scripts. Well at least I also get to write the firewall rules myself! Sigh...
People want to interact with other humans.
Hotel doorman problem etc.
The problem is that AI generated content always has the same structure and grammatical style, and you absolutely still need to guide it in order to make good content. Tech writers will become more productive, not obsolete.
But why not have the developer that wrote the code guide the AI to generate the content? They know the code best. Actually at this rate, developers won't be writing code anyways but they're still in a better position to guide the AI.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But why not have the developer that wrote the code guide the AI to generate the content? They know the code best. Actually at this rate, developers won't be writing code anyways but they're still in a better position to guide the AI.
Knowing the source code doesn't mean someone is a skilled communicator and expecting people who are bad at to pick out problems with LLM output in that space is a losing battle
The problem is that AI generated content always has the same structure and grammatical style, and you absolutely still need to guide it in order to make good content. Tech writers will become more productive, not obsolete.
But why not have the developer that wrote the code guide the AI to generate the content? They know the code best. Actually at this rate, developers won't be writing code anyways but they're still in a better position to guide the AI.
Nobody wants to be held more accountable with less control over the result.
The moment you tell the devs to focus on working with AI is the moment their guess is as good as anyone else's what the hell is going on. You're not going to squeeze more productivity this way.
The problem is that AI generated content always has the same structure and grammatical style, and you absolutely still need to guide it in order to make good content. Tech writers will become more productive, not obsolete.
But why not have the developer that wrote the code guide the AI to generate the content? They know the code best. Actually at this rate, developers won't be writing code anyways but they're still in a better position to guide the AI.
Knowing the code and knowing how to make the code, or the interface to the code, comprehensible to another user, are different things. Just like with UIs, and the fact that an expert is not necessarily the best teacher.
Anyhow, the age of monumental feats of technical writing is past. Too expensive, and the subject is too volatile for the most part. Economics dictate that we'll have to deal with the cheapest possible docs. We already do.
Oh good. Now the documentation will be written by The Machine That Lies to You. Wonderful. What could possibly go wrong?