I have been working as a technical writer for the past ten years. While I have worked for one company for this time period, I have worked on a wide variety of projects aimed at professional software developers.
If you are reading this, chances are, you may be interested in hiring my writing services. Below are some of my writing samples. Please review at your leisure and should you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me.
Note: All the material presented here was written by myself and edited by a dedicated editorial team. For some of these projects, I also served as a Final Pass Editor. There is no generated text included in these samples, nor do I employ generative AI in any of my work.
Process
For the most part, I do the majority of tech writing using Visual Studio Code along with Language Tool for spelling and grammar checking. I write my documents in a format called Markdown and push my changes to a GitHub repo. The repo runs some actions that convert markdown into the target format (typically HTML).
Each project starts with an outline, typically written in Google Docs. This outline is passed around the team for feedback. Once feedback has been addressed, I write my first draft. I typically sit on drafts for at least a day. I’ll go through several more revisions before submitting a draft for review. I’ll incorporate additional changes and perform a final change before submitting to the editorial teams or pushing to a repo.
For additional tools, I use Jira, Trello, Confluence, and Asana. For video editing, I use Final Cut Pro. For image generation, I used Affinity Photo 2 and GIMP. I also use Keynote to produce rough diagrams for illustrators. Once production is completed, I compile feedback in Jira tickets.
For software development, I have professional experience with the following languages: Swift, Kotlin, Objective-C, C, C#, Java, PHP, Dart, SQL, XML, HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. I also am familiar with Android Studio, Xcode, and the Flutter framework.
While I have shipped software, I consider myself a technical writer with coding experience as opposed to a software developer.
Handling feedback
During an interview, a panel asked me, “how do I handle negative feedback?”. It was an interesting question. It caught me by surprise because feedback is a data point.
Data is neither good nor bad. Data is a calibration tool. I use feedback data to assess my writing. Is it achieving its objectives? Is it properly balanced in a way to best serves the reader? For this reason, I weigh feedback based on the usefulness of the data.
For me, negative feedback is “this is great” or “this is terrible”. These statements don’t help me in any way. These statements lack all detail. Bad feedback is also “you are an amazing writer” or “your writing sucks”. That invites the ego into the process. Writing isn’t about me. It’s about the audience.
Should I encounter “weak” or “bad” feedback, then I work with my reviewers on how to provide meaningful constructive feedback.
Amazon Sumerian by Tutorials
This was a book that was commissioned by Amazon to teach their browser-based Sumerian 3D engine. This engine was positioned to create “3D experiences” for businesses. While there was a large emphasis on AR/VR integration, it was meant as a frontend for AWS. Unfortunately, the engine did not gain enough interest and Amazon shut down the project in 2022.
I co-wrote this book with another author and served as the Final Pass Editor.
Unity Games by Tutorials
In 2015, I was tasked with starting a Unity team at Kodeco (then known as raywenderlich.com). Once I recruited a number of Unity developers, we collaborated on Unity Games by Tutorials. I was the lead writer and Final Pass Editor. There were four editions of the book until it was retired in 2020. You can read my chapters on this website here.
Articles
I have written scores of articles for Kodeco on a variety of subjects such as announcements to tutorials. You can find them here:
https://www.kodeco.com/45149234-seven-key-product-announcements-from-google-i-o-2024
(pdf version)
https://www.kodeco.com/39848254-the-top-5-flutter-state-management-solutions-a-deep-dive
(pdf version)
https://www.kodeco.com/40114151-google-i-o-2023-takeaways-for-android-developers
(pdf version)
https://www.kodeco.com/7514-introduction-to-unity-getting-started-part-1-2
(pdf version)
Articles on Technical Writing and AI
These are some of my own articles about the field of Technical Writing, writing and AI.
Technical writing in the age of AI
