One benefit of unemployment is that I finally have time to do all the learning and training that I wanted to do while I was still employed. When you’re working full time and also taking care of a household after work, it can be hard to find both time and energy to do any additional training. On top of that, learning about complex, technical subjects requires lots of energy. You need enough energy to not understand something at first and then keep going until you start to gradually understand it. If you’re just running on the energy left over after your FT job, this can be tough.
My main focus these days has been to sharpen my skills regarding API documentation. Years ago, I took some classes on Udemy courtesy of instructor Peter Gruenbaum. While those classes provided a solid foundation, I wanted to refresh my skills. In addition, I later discovered Tom Johnson’s API docs course, which he offers for free on his website. According to several tech writers in the Write The Docs community, this course is the gold standard for learning API docs. I’m about halfway through the course and I certainly agree.
What I like about Johnson’s API docs course is that it covers so much more material than other courses. Other courses I’ve seen (including the Udemy courses) tend to focus only on the API reference for each endpoint. While that’s important, that’s also only a portion of documentation needed. In addition to the API references, you need various conceptual docs explaining authorization and authentication, rate limits, and error codes. You also need code tutorials and SDKs. Johnson’s course covers such topics.
Further, Johnson’s course provides much more detail and context than other courses. The second chapter of this course is titled “Using an API like a developer.” This chapter provides insight into developers that other courses often gloss over. You learn about how developers choose APIs and some of the factors that typically affect their decision.
Johnson’s course also introduces several popular tools used for API documentation, giving you practical experience with real tools in use today. The Udemy courses covered theory and concepts but the actual documentation was done using traditional authoring programs like Microsoft Word. Johnson’s course exposes you to more modern docs-as-code tools (e.g. CLI, Git, Redocly, Document360) as well as other tools that are useful for coding (e.g. Postman, Stoplight).
Unfortunately, I’ve run into a hurdle with Johnson’s course. To complete many of the exercises, you must find an open-source project to work on. This is a good idea in theory as it gives you real experience and an opportunity to create work samples for your portfolio. But this has proven to be more difficult than I expected. These days, many open-source projects involve machine learning, a domain which is incredibly complex even for many engineers. I’m having trouble finding projects that are both active and suitable for my level of technical knowledge.
Despite my challenges, this API docs course has been amazing in both breadth and depth. I’m glad I’ve been able to dedicate enough energy to make my way through the course. This is a must for all tech writers, especially as the field moves more and more to creating developer documentation.