Overview of Documentation Tools: Accessing Knowledge

Page Summary

An overview of documentation tools and the discipline behind them, tracing from IBM's 700-page 704 manual to Stripe's industry-best API docs. It distinguishes the types of documentation (reference, conceptual, procedural, institutional knowledge), maps the tool landscape (wiki-style platforms, developer doc tools, in-code generated references, runbooks), diagnoses the structural creation, currency, and discovery problems, introduces the Diataxis framework, and gives a decision framework based on who writes the docs, their purpose, and scale, plus quality signals.

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Every accepted correction to this page is recorded with the exact change, so readers can see how the page improved over time.

1. 11 July 2026 · corrected by Emir Baycan

   The IBM 704 was announced in 1954 (first deliveries 1955), not 1956

   Before

   In 1956, IBM introduced the IBM 704, one of the first commercial computers with floating-point arithmetic.

   After

   In 1954, IBM introduced the IBM 704, one of the first commercial computers with floating-point arithmetic.

   Why: Verified live: body content already correctly states 1954. FAQ does not reference the IBM 704 date at all, and excerpt/meta_description/seo_keywords are unaffected, so no residual fabrication anywhere on the post.

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