Docs-as-Code Doesn’t Mean Docs-as-Hard

Fear of the Terminal Is Real

The first time some­one asked me to “push to ori­gin,” I thought they meant a pub­lish­ing house.

Docs-as-code has a rep­u­ta­tion prob­lem. For many writ­ers, espe­cial­ly those com­ing from edi­to­r­i­al, mar­ket­ing, or con­tent back­grounds, the phrase con­jures up com­mand-line anx­i­ety, Git mishaps, and files float­ing around in a sea of cryp­tic ver­sion branches.

Let’s be hon­est: Git is not intu­itive. Asci­iDoc has more sym­bols than a DTP lay­out. Sta­t­ic site gen­er­a­tors sound like some­thing NASA would use. So when we say “Docs-as-Code doesn’t mean Docs-as-Hard,” I am not dis­miss­ing those challenges.

I’m say­ing this: Hard things become easy when they’re well-designed and well-sup­port­ed. Then they’re worth the effort.

Docs-as-Code Is a Workflow. Not a Tech Test

Docs-as-code isn’t about turn­ing writ­ers into developers.

It’s about giv­ing writers:

• Ver­sion­ing – so they can work safe­ly in parallel.
• Mod­u­lar­i­ty – so they don’t repeat them­selves across prod­ucts or features.
• Trans­paren­cy – so reviews hap­pen in con­text, not in a 27th email thread.

None of this requires ter­mi­nal wiz­ardry. But it does require a clear, inten­tion­al onboard­ing experience.

Why AsciiDoc + AsciiDoctor Is Worth the Leap

If you’ve ever felt con­strained by Mark­down, Asci­iDoc is the upgrade you didn’t know you needed.

It gives you:

• Rich, seman­tic markup that actu­al­ly makes sense
• Attrib­ut­es, con­di­tion­al blocks, call­outs, variables
• Nat­ur­al cross-ref­er­enc­ing and con­tent reuse

Asci­iDoc­tor (the sta­t­ic site gen­er­a­tor) turns this into a pro­fes­sion­al-look­ing site with min­i­mal fuss. And with Anto­ra, you can scale across entire doc­u­men­ta­tion portals.

Sure, the syn­tax takes a minute to learn. But the pay­off? It’s like switch­ing from Notepad to InDesign.

Yes, Git Is Hard. So Make It Easy

Git is pow­er­ful, but it’s not friend­ly out of the box. That’s why your writ­ers need:

• Visu­al Git clients like GitHub Desk­top, GitKrak­en, or Sourcetree
• Train­ing ses­sions tai­lored to real writ­ing workflows
• Pair­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties with devel­op­ers or tech­ni­cal leads
• Pull request tem­plates that walk them through review expectations

Pro tip: auto­mate every­thing you can. CI pipelines that val­i­date builds. Netli­fy or Ver­cel pre­views. Lint­ing for style rules. The less they need to think about Git inter­nals, the faster they can focus on content.

Automation = Writer Freedom

Once things are set up right, docs-as-code stops being a con­straint and becomes pure lib­er­a­tion.

No more “where’s the lat­est ver­sion?” No more “can some­one send me the PDF?” No more “oops, we over­wrote each other’s changes.”

Asci­iDoc + Git + a clean CI pipeline means:

• Instant builds
• Instant pre­views
• Instant clar­i­ty

Writ­ers can focus on writ­ing. Every­thing else is just plumbing.

You’re Not Writing Code. You’re Building a System

This isn’t about turn­ing prose into pro­gram­ming. It’s about treat­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion as an ecosys­tem: one that evolves, reuses, and scales.

Docs-as-code gives writ­ers the tools to:

• Break big nar­ra­tives into reusable pieces
• Track what’s cur­rent, what’s deprecated
• Write once, deploy anywhere

Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. It’s not hard­er. It’s just struc­tured.

But It Only Works If You Support the Writers

This work­flow can be a game-chang­er. But only if:

• Writ­ers are prop­er­ly trained
• Tools are cho­sen with empathy
• The dev team treats docs as part of the product

Don’t toss some­one a ter­mi­nal and expect mag­ic. Invest in doc­u­men­ta­tion cul­ture, and you’ll get expo­nen­tial returns.

Hard ≠ Bad. Unsupported = Bad

Docs-as-code isn’t “easy” by default. But it becomes easy with:

• The right tools
• The right support
• The right philosophy

Because in the end, it’s not about code. It’s about con­trol, clar­i­ty, and col­lab­o­ra­tion. And that’s some­thing every writer deserves.