React Advanced

React Advanced 2024

Hi, I'm Mark Erickson, and today I'm very happy to talk to you about designing effective documentation, lessons I've learned writing the Redux docs. We'll discuss organizational techniques, practical tips, writing tutorials, and useful documentation tools. Redux offers learning-oriented tutorials and goal-oriented how-to guides. Other documentation categories include reference guides, explanations, readme files, FAQ pages, and release notes. Tips for organizing and writing documentation: consider the target reader, assume prerequisite knowledge, repeat information, cover topics in multiple areas. Writing tutorials for libraries in TypeScript presents challenges but can be tackled with TypeScript-first approach and keeping examples up-to-date. Engaging tutorials involve interactive exercises, diagrams, and formatting, and should be reviewed and improved based on feedback. Overall, documentation is valuable and worth the effort.

You've just finished building a brand-new blazing fast JS library and can't wait to publish it to NPM. But hold on a minute - what about the docs? Sure, anyone can slap together a README with some example code snippets, but have you actually thought about how to actually design the docs themselves?Join Redux maintainer Mark Erikson as we look at ways to effectively structure and write documentation to help your users learn and understand how to use your tools, based on years of experience building the Redux docs.  We'll talk about patterns for organizing categories of documentation, tips for making the docs easier to read and understand, useful tools for working with docs content, and more!

Designing Effective Documentation: Lessons Learned Building the Redux Docs

Mark Erikson

React Summit

React Summit 2024

Mark Erickson explains the history, creation, evolution, and benefits of Redux. Redux was designed to make state updates and action history maintenance easy, incorporating functional programming principles. Redux Toolkit was created to simplify Redux usage. Redux is still a valid choice for its consistent pattern and separation of state from UI. The decision to use Redux depends on the specific use case and the need for centralized state management.

I've always avoided trying to do sales pitches for Redux, and tbh most of my time has been spent telling people when they _shouldn't_ use Redux :) But I still see lots of folks asking "_when_ should I use Redux?", and "how does Redux compare to $OTHER_TOOL?". So, I figure it's worth actually doing a talk where I cover the actual benefits and reasons to consider using Redux today.

#redux