Documentation Skills vs Verbal Communication

Developers should learn documentation skills to ensure their work is understandable, reusable, and maintainable by others, which is critical in collaborative environments and for long-term project success meets developers should learn and use verbal communication to explain complex technical issues to non-technical audiences, such as during project meetings or client presentations. Here's our take.

Documentation Skills

Nice Pick

Developers should learn documentation skills to ensure their work is understandable, reusable, and maintainable by others, which is critical in collaborative environments and for long-term project success

Pros

• These skills are essential when working on open-source projects, onboarding new team members, or building APIs and libraries that external developers will use
• Related to: technical-writing, api-documentation

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Verbal Communication

Developers should learn and use verbal communication to explain complex technical issues to non-technical audiences, such as during project meetings or client presentations

Pros

• It is crucial for pair programming, code reviews, and agile ceremonies like stand-ups and retrospectives, where clear articulation of ideas and feedback improves team efficiency and project outcomes
• Related to: written-communication, active-listening

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

These tools serve different purposes. Documentation Skills is a methodology while Verbal Communication is a concept. We picked Documentation Skills based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

Documentation Skills wins

Based on overall popularity. Documentation Skills is more widely used, but Verbal Communication excels in its own space.