
Ask HN: Examples of good technical design docs - gru
As part of an interview process, I have recently received a take home assignment of writing a technical design doc for a simple web app. Turns out I badly suck at it.<p>I have found resources describing the templates, the &quot;hows&quot; and &quot;whys&quot; of TDD, but I struggle to find some actual, real-life examples.<p>Can you recommend any good technical design docs? Or any other resource that would make you better at writing such documents?
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wh-uws
I got a lot of good information on writing design docs from here

[https://www.industrialempathy.com/posts/design-docs-at-
googl...](https://www.industrialempathy.com/posts/design-docs-at-google/)

also if you just Google the 2 words "design docs" there's actually a
surprising amount of useful things that pop up

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gru
Thanks, I'm familiar with the link you posted. You're also right that there's
plenty of online resources about writing technical design docs.

However, what I'm looking for are not the articles _about_ writing technical
design but the _actual_ design documents. Preferably ones that are considered
well written by the community.

~~~
boredatworkme
I've prepared some technical design documents for my day job. I think this
somewhat comes close to the template that we follow. Take a look if this works
for you:

[https://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/pgasite/docume...](https://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/pgasite/documents/webpage/pga_179129.pdf)

{I'm not sure if there is a golden sample that can be referred to. Gitlab has
some good docs as well. Maybe that will help?}

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asicsp
These might help:

* [https://github.com/jenniferlynparsons/awesome-writing](https://github.com/jenniferlynparsons/awesome-writing)

* [https://www.divio.com/blog/documentation/](https://www.divio.com/blog/documentation/)

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w_t_payne
Here's a good resource that I find useful:- [http://everyspec.com/USAF/USAF-
SMC/SMC-S-012_16JAN2015_52130...](http://everyspec.com/USAF/USAF-
SMC/SMC-S-012_16JAN2015_52130/)

