The ReadMe Manifesto

Hi, my name is Greg and I am the creator of ReadMe.io.

ReadMe.io has been a dream of ours for years and, as I hope you see, we put a lot of sweat into it. I want to take this opportunity to tell you why I think code documentation is so important. [Bear with me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KizGLZ6MmrE_ for a quick second.

Documenting code is a royal pain in the ass. When deadlines loom and so much focus is placed on creating a functional product, documenting a code library or making an API accessible to the public almost always takes a back seat. This is a huge mistake.

Why? Because it’s all about developers, developers, developers (I refuse to hyperlink that one, by the way). In this era of connected services, unimaginable functionality and potential growth comes not from your own blood, sweat and tears, but from the community of developers willing to connect their work to yours, access your data, and bring you new audiences. In truth, building a powerful and easy to use public API will be your best early business hire, ever.

I know this first hand. So I built ReadMe.io to give early, growth, and even large companies the opportunity to engage their developer communities through beautiful, collaborative developer hubs.

To me, a developer hub is not simply a reference section for your API. It should help onboard, orient, and deepen your developer community’s relationship with your product. The people who are willing to spend their time and energy to use your code: they’re awesome. So treat them well.

A quick note about process: As people begin to realize how important documentation can be for a company’s success, there will inevitably be more cooks in the kitchen. Does product marketing or product management really have a role in your code documentation? I actually think they do. A developer hub is as much a teaching tool and mission statement as it is a reference tool. And, honestly, engineers should be minimizing their time spent creating documentation, anyway.

So, I encourage you to use ReadMe.io throughout your product team. Updates should come hot and heavy, and a list of basic methods will be a thing of the past.