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On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 4:08 PM, Keith Hood <klhra -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
> Thanks all for the input about API docs. On the off chance anyone was interested, I once had to do API docs for Java packages, so it was object-oriented. I've forgotten just about everything I ever knew, since I never used that knowledge again.
>
> That was the one thing I've done in a long time that I thought was worthy of some pride. The company wanted API docs and I'd never such work before, so I had to go out on the web and educate myself about them. I read bout the Sun Javadoc tool and I installed it and learned how to use it, then experimented with it for weeks until I was getting what I thought were good results. Then I had to automate it because otherwise using it took too much of my day. When I was finished, I had a system that would automatically run Javadoc and make weekly updates on a library of a dozen packages that contained more than 54,000 class files. The developers had to check in all their new code by 5 PM on Sunday. Every Monday before dawn a cron job would rename the previous API files to create archive copies, run up a new set of API docs under the original pathnames, update the web page that I made to provide links to all the available documents, and send out an email to all
> the engineers to notify them new API pages were done.
>
> And then some woman asked me a short simple question about it and the only honest answer I could give her was, I couldn't remember anything. Sheesh.
That's a great accomplishment, especially since you started from
knowing nothing about API docs.
This is a good example of why you should keep a "master" version of
your resume that lists everything you've accomplished since forever.
You never send out the master, but use it to create shorter, tailored
versions for specific job openings. AND you review the master resume
before you go to interviews, to remind yourself of all the cool stuff
you've done, in case something like this comes up.
Put a reminder in your calendar to update the master resume about once
a quarter, even (especially) when you're happily employed. It will pay
off big time in the long run. If three or four months go by without
having a bullet point to add to your master resume, it's time to
reflect on what's happening with your current job, and what you can do
to have a bigger impact.
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