Serious open source docs work has a cost. I wrote down every way that I know of that gets docs authors and maintainers paid. https://ddbeck.com/where-does-the-money-come-from/ #WriteTheDocs
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Daniel D. Beck
@ddbeck@mastodon.social
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06I write documentation and I program, so I know lots of ways to use a semicolon. 🇺🇸 in 🇳🇱.
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Joined September 27, 2017
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I took some brief notes on contributing to Git for the first time https://ddbeck.com/notes/first-git-commit
It's the first of the month, which is a great time to document something you haven't documented before with a README file https://github.com/ddbeck/readme-checklist
Spec fiction or that which was specified but never implemented https://ddbeck.com/notes/spec-fiction
The syntaxes jq uses for extracting an object’s keys, values, and entries are confusingly dissimilar. One of them is not like the others. A brief note with examples. https://ddbeck.com/notes/jq-object-entries-keys-and-values
It's the first of the month and you know what that means: time to document something with a README file https://github.com/ddbeck/readme-checklist #WriteTheDocs
Replying to
@bkardell@toot.cafe In another universe, the original `` element had a `version` attribute and much less backwards compatibility. I imagine it kills "the" web in some sense—you probably get multiple competing webs and maybe none enjoys the success of ours—but whatever blogging looks like in that universe has lots of "HTML had the right idea" retrospectives.
Replying to
@ashur@front-end.social This is really nice. I think it's also good advice for asking in public forums (e.g., here, some tool's Discord server, etc.). I shared it in a community chat I help moderate. Thank you for writing it!
I finally added video of my talk "Stop chopping onions and extend Markdown without tears" to my site. It's my guided tour of a few little-used extension points in Markdown. https://ddbeck.com/fosdem2026/
A reader recently wrote to me asking about how to organize docs, especially planning and design docs, in a new open source project. I blogged my response. #WriteTheDocs #documentation https://ddbeck.com/where-do-open-source-docs-go/
It's the first of the month and you're no fool. Why not share what you know by writing a README file? https://github.com/ddbeck/readme-checklist
A note on @jmac@masto.nyc's "assertions documents," Cunningham's Law, and a skill development pattern in tech writing https://ddbeck.com/notes/cunninghams-law-is-a-core-skill/
I recently learned that there's a HTML element. It's the inline counterpart to
, except much weirder. https://ddbeck.com/notes/the-q-element
Notes on pandoc for the people, the pandoc that runs in your web browser https://ddbeck.com/notes/pandoc-for-the-people
You might know camelCase or snake_case or kebab-case, but do you know Tall Man? https://ddbeck.com/notes/tall-man-lettering/
If you came to my talk at FOSDEM, "Stop chopping onions and extend Markdown without tears," thank you! My talk page has credits, slides, and further links. (This page works now, if you tried to go to it earlier.) https://ddbeck.com/fosdem2026/
xkcd 2347 is the unofficial logo of FOSDEM
Replying to
@b0rk@social.jvns.ca thanks for explaining! Erin and I kinda glossed over where to get money in our talk. Google's Season of Docs was the only docs-specific funding program that I knew of, but it has sadly ended. Docs funding seems to come through weird one-off sources, or attached to new development work. I ought to write more about this phenomenon.
Why a 10-year-old Tumblr post by @galaxykate@xoxo.zone is the most important thing I've read about generating text https://ddbeck.com/notes/slops-ancestor/
Today's the first Monday of the month, which is a great time to document the undocumented with a README https://github.com/ddbeck/readme-checklist
If you work with many Git remotes or submodules, you can save time on fetches with parallel jobs https://ddbeck.com/notes/git-fetch-parallel-jobs/
Hey, web specification authors: I dare you to title a spec without a Pascal case "Web" prefix. I bet you can't do it!
Replying to
@imrehg That's the newest one, though a longstanding gripe I have about browser specs in general.
With Git, I sometimes check out a single file, such as a shell script, from another branch. I didn't know how to do this with Jujutsu, so I took notes on how, plus why jj's equivalent confuses me. https://ddbeck.com/notes/jj-copy-file-from-revision
Had to reset the clock for "time since hearing a dick joke made on stage at a tech conference" which was standing at years 🙁
I took some notes on Peter Hilton's prescriptions for solving the team tech blog problem and suggest one of my own https://ddbeck.com/notes/tech-blog-problem-solved
I cleaned up some disused dotfiles (and worse, code to manage to said dotfiles) and ended up taking some notes on some software I really like: Stow. https://ddbeck.com/notes/stow-and-dotfiles
Replying to
@b0rk@social.jvns.ca did you do this out of your own interest? Or do you have some kind of funding to do this work?
Replying to
@bkardell@toot.cafe it's been a while since I've looked at the '90s docs but I thought the original doctype was also unversioned? Something rather close to <!DOCTYPE HTML>?