What Alice Ryhl thinks about documentation

@alice-ryhl · 23 positions · On ppll ↗

Software engineer on Google's Android Rust team, a core maintainer of the Tokio async runtime and an adviser to the Rust language team.

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Only Alice Ryhl on documentation. See everyone on documentation

2 dated positions, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Alice Ryhl has said — not written or endorsed by them.

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1. 20 May 2026

   Our readingExamples in documentation should be compiled and run as tests, so that changing the code breaks the docs instead of quietly outdating them.

   Their wordsNow the thing is you can of course write examples in your documentation and Rust makes all examples into tests. This means that if you change the underlying code now your test fails. And so this means that you can't even you can't forget to update your examples in your documentation.

   ↗Why Rust is different, with Alice Ryhlyoutube.com 4th of 23 in this recording

3. 20 May 2026

   Our readingA design proposal should describe the feature as though it already existed — once as a tutorial and once as reference documentation.

   design

   Their wordsAnd what this is is that in the guide level explanation, you explain your feature as if you were writing a guide as if the feature already existed. And in the reference level explanation, you explain your feature again as if it already existed, but as if it would be in the language reference instead of a tutorial.

   ↗Why Rust is different, with Alice Ryhlyoutube.com 16th of 23 in this recording