The document discusses SendGrid's efforts to improve their documentation through multiple versions. It highlights the importance of documentation for developers and reducing support tickets. The document also outlines SendGrid's open source libraries and projects for different programming languages, with PHP, C#, and Python being the most popular. Reasons for open source libraries include reducing setup work for users and providing example implementations.

1. Brandon
West
SendGrid
Manager, Developer Relations
@bwest
Who am I ?
brandon@sendgrid.com

2. SendGrid
Documentation
& Open Source Projects

3. Why Documentation Matters
ProgrammableWeb.com API Survey Results
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4. What Documentation Does
Developers Self Serve
Reduce Support Tickets
Establishes Credibility
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5. API Workshop
Test the API
from browser.
No code.
!
New version
coming soon!
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6. Documentation Is Not Easy
• We are on our third version of documentation. The first 2 were bad.
• It’s a big job. We’re now hiring a person to manage it full time.
• Things are constantly changing
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7. What Makes Sustainable Documentation?
• Change tracking / version control
• Ease of deploying changes
• Maintainability of platform
• Smart constraints
• Smart defaults
• Ease of editing content
• Defined structure
• These are a lot of the same things that make code sustainable.
!
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8. !8

9. Open Source Libraries
PHP
C#
Node.js
Obj-C
Perl
Go
Python
Java
https://github.com/sendgrid/
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10. Most Popular Libraries
PHP
C#
Based on views on Github
over the last 2 weeks
Python
Node.js
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11. Why Have Open Source Libraries?
• Reduce the amount of work it takes for new users to get started
• Developers like package managers such as npm, nuget, rubygems
• Provides example implementations even if devs don’t use them
• Lets us provide smart defaults — e.g. Web API instead of SMTP
• If we don’t build them, someone will. But we get the questions!
• It’s fun 😊
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12. Not Just API Wrappers
• Our documentation is open source! github.com/sendgrid/docs
• New newsletter subscription widget is also open source
• We’re trying to open source more projects as well
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13. Thank you !!