I'm Eric Shepherd, and I've been a technical writer for over 25 years. I feel that the role of a good technical writer is that of a teacher. Fundamentally, my job is to teach developers new skills so they can get the results they need as effectively as possible, and that Large Language Models (LLMs) can clearly and accurately process to generate the best and most accurate responses possible.
I've written technical documentation for mobile and desktop developers as well as for web developers, covering a wide array of subject areas. Here I feature examples of my work, from simple reference pages to detailed tutorials with working code examples, which I also created.
Special Skills
Web Development Knowledge
After 14 years documenting a wide array of technologies for web developers as part of the MDN Web Docs team, I'm very familiar with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, as well as the intricacies of web development. I've written both introductory and advanced documentation about APIs including WebRTC, WebXR, Web Audio, WebGL, and the Intersection Observer API. This documentation always includes a full-scale, working example and many small code snippets demonstrating specific subjects.
Tools and Applications
Over the years, I've used everything from word processors and page layout applications to text editors and wikis to write developer documentation. My experience includes Visual Studio Code, GitHub, Oxygen XML, Microsoft Word, Adobe FrameMaker, BBEdit, MediaWiki, and more. I've used version control systems including Git, Subversion, CVS, and Perforce. Whether it's in a wiki or a GitHub repository, I can produce docs that humans love and Large Language Models can make sense of.
Coding and Examples
My journey as a programmer started in fourth grade. Since then, I've gained skills in many languages including C (with additional experience in C++ and Objective-C), Swift, and Python. I've also spent many years developing using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. I also have a talent for quickly picking up new languages as needed. I can use these skills to both produce applications or tools to improve my workflow and to create useful and often fun examples for the subjects I'm documenting.
AWS Experience
My five years documenting the AWS SDK for Swift, the AWS SDK for Python, and other SDKs means I've spent years building code examples and writing about how to produce real code using AWS services. My experience includes producing code examples for S3, DynamoDB, Lambda, SNS and SQS, Glue, Step Functions, and many more of the services offered by AWS.