Doing the dance of success

[selenay]

I have succeeded, for the first time ever, in getting something approved by Da Big Boss without a dozen changes. This is a momentous event and must be celebrated. Good thing I'm going out for Chinese tonight :-)

I was even congratulated on my planning skills because I've spent time creating pretty flow charts with coloured boxes and pages of documentation on everything about the program I'm writing. Go me!

I am such a total geek sometimes.

Comments

[historyterry.livejournal.com]

Good stuff!

And, of course, I am in no way jealous of the fact that you are effectively getting praised for doing the job of a technical writer, while I'm stuck here setting up test databases with 1,500 pages of manuals unproofed just sitting here :-).

Honestly, sounds like you're having a good day. Hope you have a great time tonight.

Tx

[selenay]

Huh. I had no idea that all this planning and flow charts and documentation stuff was what a technical writer does. I always assumed that the technical writers don't get involved until after the software has been written...

That's kind of cool. I had a really good day yesterday all told. And now I'm paying for it today :-)

[historyterry.livejournal.com]

No - if you don't get involved till afterwards, it's crap management. Documentation *should* be an integral part of the product development lifecycle. (It's also a pretty cost-effective way of getting new features tested.)

Us guys can go to the programmers early on with any WTF-logic comments, which then hopefully means the software will ultimately make more sense to the users. And you can't hang around waiting to release software for four months or so while someone writes a manual for it. Well, that's how it's supposed to work, anyway. But comments like that round here get me a stare which implies people are thinking "This is a COM-PUT-ER. You type here, look! Pretty picture, makey-workey!"

Sorry to hear you're paying for it today. Oh, well, tomorrow you get to watch me in 'shopping' mode. Be afraid! I am bringing about three pints of freshly ground Marogype.