In my first year of writing technical content, I reached hundreds of thousands of readers around the world, met some of my role models, and made thousands of dollars. Writing for Software Developers will help you on your way to doing the same.
I earn $250 to $500 per article when writing tutorials — and with a few projects, that money adds up. But money isn't the only reason to write. A portfolio of published writing can give you a leg up toward earning a raise, landing a new job, or reaching new clients or customers.
Writing for Software Developers outlines my own method for writing and developing technical articles that will earn you money and look great in a portfolio. By following the principles in this book, you will become a better writer — and practicing quality techniques like these will speed up your rate of improvement.
Writing for Software Developers focuses on teaching you how to envision, create, and publish mid-length technical tutorials and articles, but the principles and practices you’ll develop will help you write anything from a short README to an entire technical book. And regardless of why you write, this guide aims to provide you with the techniques you will need to reach your goals.
Single Copy: $36 | Team License: $136
New: Writing for Software Developers now supports purchase power parity. This dynamically applies location-based discounts based on GDP and currency conversion rates.
Click here to see if a PPP discount applies to your purchase.
Over 1,000 copies sold with a 5-star rating on Gumroad. More ratings & reviews on Goodreads.
You will be redirected to Gumroad to complete your purchase.
Courtland Allen is the founder of Indie Hackers, an online community for people working on independent bootstrapped businesses, of which I am proud to count myself as a member. Indie Hackers, now owned by Stripe, has been a source of knowledge and inspiration to me throughout the process of writing this book. Allen has interviewed over five hundred founders for his site and podcast.
Jeff Atwood is the writer of Coding Horror (one of the internet's longest-running and most popular technical blogs), co-founder of Stack Overflow and the Stack Exchange network (one of the 100 highest-traffic sites in the United States), and co-founder of Discourse (a provider of open-source forum software aiming to improve the state of online communication).
Chris on Code started scotch.io with his childhood friend Nick Cerminara to publish articles and courses on front-end development. Under his care, the site grew to four million monthly page views and published over five hundred guest authors before he sold Scotch to Digital Ocean in late 2019. He joined the company as a web community manager.
Peter Cooper runs Cooper Press, a publisher of a dozen email newsletters with a combined distribution of almost half a million developers at the time of writing. He reads countless technical articles in search of the best content to share with his subscribers.
Angel Guarisma eats, sleeps, and breathes documentation. At the time of our interview, he was the Director of Content at Linode, a cloud computing company with a major presence in the open source community. He now works as the Director of Product Education at Humio. At Linode, Guarisma led an in-house team of technical writers and editors and works with numerous freelancers to publish wide-ranging and comprehensive tutorials and documentation.
Matt Levine is a columnist at Bloomberg where he writes Money Stuff, an incredibly popular weekday newsletter on finance that is widely read in the tech sector. Previously, he wrote at Dealbreaker, and he has written for The Wall Street Journal, CNN.com, and NPR. While his substantial experience is entirely outside writing about software, his techniques and insights are applicable to the work we do.
Mark McGranaghan created Go by Example, a website for teaching the programming language Go. Go by Example drew attention for its two-column design and quality example code. Today, he works at Ink & Switch, a research lab that produces reports and spin-off companies in consumer software.
Patrick McKenzie has been writing on his website, kalzumeus.com, since 2006. He has written over five hundred articles about lessons learned working on Bingo Card Creator, Appointment Reminder, and Starfighter, consulting for software companies on engineering and marketing, and most recently working on Atlas for Stripe. He is also the third highest-ranked user of all time by upvotes on Hacker News.
Tracy Osborn is a writer and conference speaker. She has published three books under the "Hello Web" series: Hello Web App, Hello Web App Intermediate Concepts, and Hello Web Design. She is a frequent speaker at numerous events, writes extensively on her personal website, and currently works at TinySeed.
Daniel Vassallo worked at AWS for eight years. After quitting to work for himself, one of the first things he created was the self-published ebook The Good Parts of AWS, with Josh Pschorr. Thanks in large part to Vassallo's audience on Twitter, which he earned by sharing detailed insights into his work, the book sold thousands of copies in its first three months on the market, generating over $50,000 in revenue.
Cassidy Williams has spent years working in developer evangelism, speaking at dozens of conferences, and writing technical content, including the Stack Overflow newsletter. At the time of the interview, she taught with React Training. She now works at Netlify. She publishes a weekly newsletter, rendezvous with cassidoo.
This chapter guides you through a process for generating article ideas and helps you determine which ideas are worth pursuing first.
Single Copy: $36 | Team License: $136
New: Writing for Software Developers now supports purchase power parity. This dynamically applies location-based discounts based on GDP and currency conversion rates.
Click here to see if a PPP discount applies to your purchase.
You will be redirected to Gumroad to complete your purchase.
In Spring 2019, I started writing technical tutorials. After noticing my success publishing tens of thousands of words of technical content, friends and co-workers started asking me how they could do the same. Their interest inspired me to write this book. Today, I'm a technical writer at BaseTen.
I published Writing for Software Developers on May 12, 2020, six days before my virtual college graduation ceremony, where I received a B.A. with honors in computer science from Grinnell College. I now live in Washington DC. When I am not writing and programming, I practice martial arts, read widely, and further my love of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
For more about me, check out the rest of my website.
Yes. Writing for Software Developers takes you through my process, one step at a time, and helps you create and publish your first article.
Yes. If you have already written and published technical content, you will enjoy the nuances of the eleven expert interviews and extract key insights from the main text.
Not as much as you might think. I started writing technical content as a junior in college, less than two years after I started programming. Many of the code examples I used in articles were based on projects that I had worked on much earlier in my journey toward becoming a software engineer.
If enough people express interest, I will figure out how to make one available.
Yes! Your purchase of Writing for Software Developers includes an audiobook version narrated by Griffin Mareske. The audiobook is 6 hours and 35 minutes long and does not include the appendices, images, or code snippets.
If you purchase an individual license, please respect the license terms and do not distribute any copies. If you want to share the book with your team, company, or class, please purchase a team license. Academic and nonprofit organizations can contact me for fifty percent off a team license.
I have a 30-day no-questions-asked refund policy. If you don't like it, let me know and I will refund your money.
Yes! For some locations, discounts between 20% and 60% are automatically applied at checkout based on GDP and conversion rates. Learn more
I priced this book as I did because it teaches valuable skills in a well-compensated industry. If you are unable to afford a copy of the book, send me an email and I can give you a free copy. I only ask that once you make money using the advice in the book, you use a portion of the proceeds to purchase a copy of this book.
Wow, thanks for asking! Writing for software engineers. Writing for programmers. Writing for coders. Technical writing. How to write documentation.
Send me an email at philip@kiely.xyz.
Single Copy: $36 | Team License: $136 | PPP discounts available
You will be redirected to Gumroad to complete your purchase.
Without Amazon, I retain ~90% of your purchase after fees (versus 35% with Amazon), which allows me to pay my rent and operate my business.
Thank you for your support!
Listen to "Episode 426: Philip Kiely on Writing for Software Developers" on Software Engineering Radio, hosted by Jeff Doolittle and produced by IEEE.
We discuss "why software engineers should care about writing things other than code.... the elements of effective technical writing and technical writers.... [and] the reason for the book and the approach for writing it."