#techwriting — Public Fediverse posts

🐘 Αποκωδικοποιώντας τα #NULL!, #VALUE! και #REF! στο @ONLYOFFICE

Στο νέο post:

🔹 Γιατί η =SUM(A1:A5 C1:C5) επιστρέφει #NULL!
🔹 Το #VALUE! από αόρατα spaces ή αριθμούς ως κείμενο (και πώς τα φτιάχνει η VALUE() & TRIM() )
🔹 Το #REF! – ο "δολοφόνος" όταν διαγράφετε γραμμές

👉 Όλα αυτά, με παραδείγματα, στο άρθρο του ONLYOFFICE (Open Source, δωρεάν, συμβατό με .xlsx)

https://www.onlyoffice.com/blog/el/2026/05/most-frequent-errors-in-spreadsheet-tables

#OnlyOffice #OpenSource #Spreadsheets #FOSS #Excel #DataCleaning #Tech #TechWriting

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@liztai/116558964865160990

To elaborate more on the corporate writing thing - I was a little too glib in saying that it's the same for writers. Unlike engineers, our work doesn't "break" noticeably. (Though I'd say a lawsuit is a pretty good wake up call lol)

When content "breaks", it's just a slow erosion of brand trust and messaging. It would probably take longer for some corporations to understand the value of content strategists, content designers, tech writers etc.

Despite AI infiltrating every aspect of the writing profession in the corporate field, there's really no replacing editorial judgement and writing flair, which is hard to define.

My concern remains the same: If no junior writers are hired, who can be these specialist writers?

I began my writing career doing the most mundane, achingly boring things. I sharpened my editing skills because at the newspaper, senior editors didn't want to edit submissions from the public, some of them from children. (Let's just say I learned A LOT from editing these submissions.)

Then I wrote "updates" from endless amounts of badly written press releases.

I interviewed people the more flashy journos didn't want to interview.

All these added to my experience.

How do we ensure working writers get the training I did?

#Writing #WritingCommunity #techwriter #techwriting

🙄 Oh look, another tech writer begging for #Heroku to use words instead of smoke signals to explain their #roadmap. But hey, at least he assures us this plea wasn’t penned by #ChatGPT. 😏💻
https://judoscale.com/blog/heroku-whats-going-on #techwriting #communication #humor #HackerNews #ngated

The Emerging Picture of a Changed Profession: Cyborg Technical Writers — Augmented, Not Replaced, by AI | by Tom Johnson

https://idratherbewriting.com/blog/cyborg-model-emerging-talk

#ai #trends #writing #docs #techwriting

A letter to those who fired tech writers because of AI

https://passo.uno/letter-those-who-fired-tech-writers-ai/

#HackerNews #techwriting #AIimpact #joblosses #writerscommunity #technologyethics

I fortunately have one colleague left (after another left), but we work in separate hours and I actually understand how this isolation feels. To compensate, I work with friends during the day and make a point to go to the physical office. I wonder how is it gonna be like in the future.

I told my friend when discussing this that in the future the need for a big team of writers may be reduced; writers will still be needed but they may be managing AI junior writers instead.

"A study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology (and analyzed by Marlynn Wei in Psychology Today) found that the more employees collaborated with AI, the more they felt “socially deprived” and lonely. The studies say that AI lacks the social cues (“facial expressions, eye contact, body postures, and gestures”) that we humans have been biologically wired for. Absent these social cues, we feel a void. "
https://idratherbewriting.com/blog/isolation-loneliness-worsens-with-ai#:~:text=.%20A%20study%20published,feel%20a%20void.

#TechWriting #TechWriter #Writing

😆 Oh, the irony! When Googling for those elusive, mythical docs, apparently, a lone example is our knight in shining armor. Yet, tech writers seem to be on an eternal #quest to create word puzzles instead of leaving a breadcrumb trail of simple #examples. 🧩🔍
https://rakhim.exotext.com/examples-are-the-best-documentation #techwriting #irony #documentation #breadcrumbs #HackerNews #ngated

Scott Laird spent a month 🤯 trying to synchronize his #Linux #clocks and wrote 3800 words 📚 on it — because apparently, nothing screams "gripping content" like the minutiae of time sync accuracy. Spoiler alert: it's as riveting as watching paint dry 🖌️.
https://scottstuff.net/posts/2025/05/19/ntp-limits/ #TimeSync #TechWriting #GeekHumor #HackerNews #ngated

Scott Laird spent a month 🤯 trying to synchronize his #Linux #clocks and wrote 3800 words 📚 on it — because apparently, nothing screams "gripping content" like the minutiae of time sync accuracy. Spoiler alert: it's as riveting as watching paint dry 🖌️.
https://scottstuff.net/posts/2025/05/19/ntp-limits/ #TimeSync #TechWriting #GeekHumor #HackerNews #ngated

Scott Laird spent a month 🤯 trying to synchronize his #Linux #clocks and wrote 3800 words 📚 on it — because apparently, nothing screams "gripping content" like the minutiae of time sync accuracy. Spoiler alert: it's as riveting as watching paint dry 🖌️.
https://scottstuff.net/posts/2025/05/19/ntp-limits/ #TimeSync #TechWriting #GeekHumor #HackerNews #ngated

Scott Laird spent a month 🤯 trying to synchronize his #Linux #clocks and wrote 3800 words 📚 on it — because apparently, nothing screams "gripping content" like the minutiae of time sync accuracy. Spoiler alert: it's as riveting as watching paint dry 🖌️.
https://scottstuff.net/posts/2025/05/19/ntp-limits/ #TimeSync #TechWriting #GeekHumor #HackerNews #ngated

Scott Laird spent a month 🤯 trying to synchronize his #Linux #clocks and wrote 3800 words 📚 on it — because apparently, nothing screams "gripping content" like the minutiae of time sync accuracy. Spoiler alert: it's as riveting as watching paint dry 🖌️.
https://scottstuff.net/posts/2025/05/19/ntp-limits/ #TimeSync #TechWriting #GeekHumor #HackerNews #ngated

A 'Choose Your Own Adventure' Written in Emacs Org Mode

https://tendollaradventure.com/sample/

#HackerNews #ChooseYourOwnAdventure #Emacs #OrgMode #InteractiveStory #TechWriting #AdventureGaming

Divine Documentation

Dad was about my age when he said that reading the manual was better than hypothesis driven button pressing. For teenage me, that took too long. Sure, I may have crashed a computer or two but following my gut got me there. Of course my gut isn’t that smart. In the decades preceding, devices had converged on a common pattern language of buttons. Once learned, the standard grammar of action would reliably deliver me to my destination. 

In programming I was similarly aided by the shared patterns across MATLAB, Python, R, Java, Julia, and even HTML. In the end however, dad was right. Reading documentation is the way. Besides showing correct usage, manuals create a new understanding of my problems. I am able to play with tech thanks to the people that took the effort and the care to create good documentation. This is not limited to code and AI. During the startup years, great handbooks clarified accounting, fundraising, and regulations, areas foreign to me.

I love good documentation and I write documentation. Writing good documentation is hard. It is an exercise in deep empathy with my user. Reaching into the future to give them all they need is part of creating good technology. Often the future user is me and I like it when past me is nice to now me. If an expert Socratic interlocutor is like weight training, documentation is a kindly spirit ancestor parting the mist. 

Maybe it’s something about being this age but now I try to impart good documentation practices to my teams. I also do not discourage pressing buttons to see what happens. Inefficient, but discovery is a fun way to spike interest.

Meanwhile, I’m reading a more basic kind of documentation. Writing English. Having resolved to write more, I’m discovering that words are buttons. Poking them gets me to where I want, but not always. Despite writerly ambitions, the basics are lacking. This became apparent recently when I picked up the book Artful Sentences by Virginia Tufte*. It’s two hundred and seventy pages of wonderful sentences dissected to show their mechanics. I was lost by page 5. The book is, temporarily, in my anti-library. 

So, I’m going to the basics, Strunk and White, and William Zinsser. I’m hoping that Writing to Learn (finished) and On Writing Well (in progress) provide sufficient context about reasons to write to make the most of S&W, for the how, then somewhere down the road, savor Tufte. 

* Those dastardly Tuftes are always making me learn some kind of grammar.

#AI #Business #ContinuousLearning #DevLife #Documentation #EmpathyInDesign #KnowledgeSharing #Leadership #LearningInPublic #ManualsMatter #OpenSource #philosophy #Programming #ReadTheDocs #science #SoftwareDevelopment #Startups #StrunkAndWhite #TechWriting #VirginiaTufte #WilliamZinsser #WritingWell

Divine Documentation

Dad was about my age when he said that reading the manual was better than hypothesis driven button pressing. For teenage me, that took too long. Sure, I may have crashed a computer or two but following my gut got me there. Of course my gut isn’t that smart. In the decades preceding, devices had converged on a common pattern language of buttons. Once learned, the standard grammar of action would reliably deliver me to my destination. 

In programming I was similarly aided by the shared patterns across MATLAB, Python, R, Java, Julia, and even HTML. In the end however, dad was right. Reading documentation is the way. Besides showing correct usage, manuals create a new understanding of my problems. I am able to play with tech thanks to the people that took the effort and the care to create good documentation. This is not limited to code and AI. During the startup years, great handbooks clarified accounting, fundraising, and regulations, areas foreign to me.

I love good documentation and I write documentation. Writing good documentation is hard. It is an exercise in deep empathy with my user. Reaching into the future to give them all they need is part of creating good technology. Often the future user is me and I like it when past me is nice to now me. If an expert Socratic interlocutor is like weight training, documentation is a kindly spirit ancestor parting the mist. 

Maybe it’s something about being this age but now I try to impart good documentation practices to my teams. I also do not discourage pressing buttons to see what happens. Inefficient, but discovery is a fun way to spike interest.

Meanwhile, I’m reading a more basic kind of documentation. Writing English. Having resolved to write more, I’m discovering that words are buttons. Poking them gets me to where I want, but not always. Despite writerly ambitions, the basics are lacking. This became apparent recently when I picked up the book Artful Sentences by Virginia Tufte*. It’s two hundred and seventy pages of wonderful sentences dissected to show their mechanics. I was lost by page 5. The book is, temporarily, in my anti-library. 

So, I’m going to the basics, Strunk and White, and William Zinsser. I’m hoping that Writing to Learn (finished) and On Writing Well (in progress) provide sufficient context about reasons to write to make the most of S&W, for the how, then somewhere down the road, savor Tufte. 

* Those dastardly Tuftes are always making me learn some kind of grammar.

#AI #Business #ContinuousLearning #DevLife #Documentation #EmpathyInDesign #KnowledgeSharing #Leadership #LearningInPublic #ManualsMatter #OpenSource #philosophy #Programming #ReadTheDocs #science #SoftwareDevelopment #Startups #StrunkAndWhite #TechWriting #VirginiaTufte #WilliamZinsser #WritingWell

Divine Documentation

Dad was about my age when he said that reading the manual was better than hypothesis driven button pressing. For teenage me, that took too long. Sure, I may have crashed a computer or two but following my gut got me there. Of course my gut isn’t that smart. In the decades preceding, devices had converged on a common pattern language of buttons. Once learned, the standard grammar of action would reliably deliver me to my destination. 

In programming I was similarly aided by the shared patterns across MATLAB, Python, R, Java, Julia, and even HTML. In the end however, dad was right. Reading documentation is the way. Besides showing correct usage, manuals create a new understanding of my problems. I am able to play with tech thanks to the people that took the effort and the care to create good documentation. This is not limited to code and AI. During the startup years, great handbooks clarified accounting, fundraising, and regulations, areas foreign to me.

I love good documentation and I write documentation. Writing good documentation is hard. It is an exercise in deep empathy with my user. Reaching into the future to give them all they need is part of creating good technology. Often the future user is me and I like it when past me is nice to now me. If an expert Socratic interlocutor is like weight training, documentation is a kindly spirit ancestor parting the mist. 

Maybe it’s something about being this age but now I try to impart good documentation practices to my teams. I also do not discourage pressing buttons to see what happens. Inefficient, but discovery is a fun way to spike interest.

Meanwhile, I’m reading a more basic kind of documentation. Writing English. Having resolved to write more, I’m discovering that words are buttons. Poking them gets me to where I want, but not always. Despite writerly ambitions, the basics are lacking. This became apparent recently when I picked up the book Artful Sentences by Virginia Tufte*. It’s two hundred and seventy pages of wonderful sentences dissected to show their mechanics. I was lost by page 5. The book is, temporarily, in my anti-library. 

So, I’m going to the basics, Strunk and White, and William Zinsser. I’m hoping that Writing to Learn (finished) and On Writing Well (in progress) provide sufficient context about reasons to write to make the most of S&W, for the how, then somewhere down the road, savor Tufte. 

* Those dastardly Tuftes are always making me learn some kind of grammar.

#AI #Business #ContinuousLearning #DevLife #Documentation #EmpathyInDesign #KnowledgeSharing #Leadership #LearningInPublic #ManualsMatter #OpenSource #philosophy #Programming #ReadTheDocs #science #SoftwareDevelopment #Startups #StrunkAndWhite #TechWriting #VirginiaTufte #WilliamZinsser #WritingWell

Divine Documentation

Dad was about my age when he said that reading the manual was better than hypothesis driven button pressing. For teenage me, that took too long. Sure, I may have crashed a computer or two but following my gut got me there. Of course my gut isn’t that smart. In the decades preceding, devices had converged on a common pattern language of buttons. Once learned, the standard grammar of action would reliably deliver me to my destination. 

In programming I was similarly aided by the shared patterns across MATLAB, Python, R, Java, Julia, and even HTML. In the end however, dad was right. Reading documentation is the way. Besides showing correct usage, manuals create a new understanding of my problems. I am able to play with tech thanks to the people that took the effort and the care to create good documentation. This is not limited to code and AI. During the startup years, great handbooks clarified accounting, fundraising, and regulations, areas foreign to me.

I love good documentation and I write documentation. Writing good documentation is hard. It is an exercise in deep empathy with my user. Reaching into the future to give them all they need is part of creating good technology. Often the future user is me and I like it when past me is nice to now me. If an expert Socratic interlocutor is like weight training, documentation is a kindly spirit ancestor parting the mist. 

Maybe it’s something about being this age but now I try to impart good documentation practices to my teams. I also do not discourage pressing buttons to see what happens. Inefficient, but discovery is a fun way to spike interest.

Meanwhile, I’m reading a more basic kind of documentation. Writing English. Having resolved to write more, I’m discovering that words are buttons. Poking them gets me to where I want, but not always. Despite writerly ambitions, the basics are lacking. This became apparent recently when I picked up the book Artful Sentences by Virginia Tufte*. It’s two hundred and seventy pages of wonderful sentences dissected to show their mechanics. I was lost by page 5. The book is, temporarily, in my anti-library. 

So, I’m going to the basics, Strunk and White, and William Zinsser. I’m hoping that Writing to Learn (finished) and On Writing Well (in progress) provide sufficient context about reasons to write to make the most of S&W, for the how, then somewhere down the road, savor Tufte. 

* Those dastardly Tuftes are always making me learn some kind of grammar.

#AI #Business #ContinuousLearning #DevLife #Documentation #EmpathyInDesign #KnowledgeSharing #Leadership #LearningInPublic #ManualsMatter #OpenSource #philosophy #Programming #ReadTheDocs #science #SoftwareDevelopment #Startups #StrunkAndWhite #TechWriting #VirginiaTufte #WilliamZinsser #WritingWell

Divine Documentation

Dad was about my age when he said that reading the manual was better than hypothesis driven button pressing. For teenage me, that took too long. Sure, I may have crashed a computer or two but following my gut got me there. Of course my gut isn’t that smart. In the decades preceding, devices had converged on a common pattern language of buttons. Once learned, the standard grammar of action would reliably deliver me to my destination. 

In programming I was similarly aided by the shared patterns across MATLAB, Python, R, Java, Julia, and even HTML. In the end however, dad was right. Reading documentation is the way. Besides showing correct usage, manuals create a new understanding of my problems. I am able to play with tech thanks to the people that took the effort and the care to create good documentation. This is not limited to code and AI. During the startup years, great handbooks clarified accounting, fundraising, and regulations, areas foreign to me.

I love good documentation and I write documentation. Writing good documentation is hard. It is an exercise in deep empathy with my user. Reaching into the future to give them all they need is part of creating good technology. Often the future user is me and I like it when past me is nice to now me. If an expert Socratic interlocutor is like weight training, documentation is a kindly spirit ancestor parting the mist. 

Maybe it’s something about being this age but now I try to impart good documentation practices to my teams. I also do not discourage pressing buttons to see what happens. Inefficient, but discovery is a fun way to spike interest.

Meanwhile, I’m reading a more basic kind of documentation. Writing English. Having resolved to write more, I’m discovering that words are buttons. Poking them gets me to where I want, but not always. Despite writerly ambitions, the basics are lacking. This became apparent recently when I picked up the book Artful Sentences by Virginia Tufte*. It’s two hundred and seventy pages of wonderful sentences dissected to show their mechanics. I was lost by page 5. The book is, temporarily, in my anti-library. 

So, I’m going to the basics, Strunk and White, and William Zinsser. I’m hoping that Writing to Learn (finished) and On Writing Well (in progress) provide sufficient context about reasons to write to make the most of S&W, for the how, then somewhere down the road, savor Tufte. 

* Those dastardly Tuftes are always making me learn some kind of grammar.

#AI #Business #ContinuousLearning #DevLife #Documentation #EmpathyInDesign #KnowledgeSharing #Leadership #LearningInPublic #ManualsMatter #OpenSource #philosophy #Programming #ReadTheDocs #science #SoftwareDevelopment #Startups #StrunkAndWhite #TechWriting #VirginiaTufte #WilliamZinsser #WritingWell

Hey Mastadon Friends!

If you enjoy real talk about AI, creative independence, prompt engineering, and future-proof thinking, with zero fluff and a little flavor, then you’ll probably dig PromptCraft: my Free Substack.

I write about:
Sovereign AI and what it means for creators, businesses, and governments.
Voice interfaces and how they’re reshaping human-computer interaction
And occasionally, how to stay human in the middle of all this chaos.
I’m not trying to build a cult. Just a smarter audience (that's also kind of a cult).

👉 Subscribe here for FREE access to articles, visuals, and thought experiments you won’t find on LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/gVj7givm
If you’re in AI, strategy, creative tech, or just curious about what’s next, consider this your signal.

#Substack #AInewsletter #PromptEngineering #AIFuture #VoiceTech #ContextEngineering #CreativeTech #SovereignAI #InnovationStrategy #TechWriting #AIMarketing #ThoughtLeadership #NewsletterMarketing #ContentStrategy #AICommunity #LLMs #ChatGPT #AINews #AI

Why I Wrote the Beam Book

https://happihacking.com/blog/posts/2025/why_I_wrote_theBEAMBook/

#HackerNews #Why #I #Wrote #the #Beam #Book #BeamBook #Hacking #Community #TechWriting #SoftwareDevelopment

🧬 Ghostwritten Infrastructure: From Org Mode to Hardened YAML #Emacs #OrgMode #Ansible #Yaml #IaC
#LiterateDevOps #OrgBabel #TangleThatYaml #DeadSwitchWay
#DevOpsTools #LinuxAutomation #CyberGhostOps
#TechWriting #TomITCafe #SilentOps

http://tomsitcafe.com/2025/04/19/%f0%9f%a7%ac-ghostwritten-infrastructure-from-org-mode-to-hardened-yaml/

⚙️ The DeadSwitch Way: Emacs, Org Mode, and the Art of Ansible Rolecraft #Emacs #OrgMode #Ansible #DevOps #IaC #LinuxAutomation
#CyberGhostOps #DeadSwitchWay #InfosecTools #SystemHardening
#TechWriting #Magit #HackerTools #TrampMode #TomITCafe
#SilentOps #InfrastructureAsCode

http://tomsitcafe.com/2025/04/18/%e2%9a%99%ef%b8%8f-the-deadswitch-way-emacs-org-mode-and-the-art-of-ansible-rolecraft/

So, I Wrote a Book: The Story Behind "100 Go Mistakes and How to Avoid Them"

https://www.thecoder.cafe/p/100-go-mistakes

#HackerNews #So #I #Wrote #a #Book #100 #Go #Mistakes #GoProgramming #BookLaunch #TechWriting

Do developers need code samples in API documentation?

https://idratherbewriting.com/blog/code-samples-might-not-be-needed-anymore

#APIDocumentation #TechWriting #CodeSamples #AI #DeveloperTools #SoftwareDocumentation #APIs #AIInTechWriting #DevDocs #TechnicalWriting #APIDocs #Coding #AIvsManual #SoftwareDevelopment

I explain what I do in descending order of specificity, situation-dependent:

- I write UI and API docs for a cybersecurity company.

- I’m a software tech writer.

- I’m a “tech writer.” I write software manuals. No, not furniture manuals.

- I work in tech. No, I’m not a programmer, but I know some. They’re nice. Sometimes.

- I work in tech.

- I work with computers.

The attached Calkearns (with alt-text) is better for some of these.

#TechWriting #TechComm #Software #Humor #Calkearns

Technical Book Review - ArcGIS Pro 3.x Cookbook – 2nd Edition
--
https://www.facebook.com/EarthStuff/posts/pfbid02tqP1CSZGexGUSwqCR458tD336DzdStXN1yiZS4t5nLHDtRbCDRHsnzTxgWCC82Yel <-- link to full review
--
[disclaimers – (i) a publisher’s representative solicited a review of & provided a copy of this book for review, but no recompense, (ii) this is my impartial, personal review - and hence is not an endorsement by my employer, implicit or otherwise.]
#GIS #spatial #mapping #ArcGIS #ArcGISPro #ESRI #bookreview #review #books #amreading #currentlyreading #nowreading #nonfictionbooks #continuingeducation #alldataisspatial #selflearning #mapmonday #gischat #techbook #techbooks #technology #h #reading #programming #bookshop #techwriting #desktopgis #selflearning #education #learning #selfimprovement #selfdevelopment #onlinelearning #selfeducation #student #motivation #careergrowth #technicalbook #continuouslearning #learningjourney #education #technicalskills #PacktPublishing

The goal of this short and sweet style guide is to be "just enough" guidance for technical documentation contributors who aren't regular writers. Thank you Lorna Jane! https://github.com/lornajane/developer-style-guide #opensource #techwriting #writethedocs #techcomm