Eric Holscher
Co-Founder at Read the Docs
Bend, Oregon, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolEric Holscher is a seasoned founder and software engineer with 17 years of experience building developer-focused products and communities, best known for co-founding Read the Docs, Write the Docs, and privacy-first ad platform EthicalAds. He blends hands-on engineering—from front-end UI work on the Sphinx Read the Docs theme to back-end support for AutoAPI and MkDocs—with leadership in open-source documentation and community building. His career spans startup engineering and operations early on to steering global initiatives for documentation quality and Python ecosystem funding. Eric emphasizes accessibility and usability, having repeatedly improved documentation tooling, tutorials, and templating across major projects like Sphinx and MkDocs. Based in Bend, Oregon, he balances technical work with local advocacy for biking infrastructure and regional tech events, reflecting a practical, community-first approach. Notably, his contributions often bridge UX polish and developer tooling, turning documentation from an afterthought into a first-class product.
17 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor’s Degree, Computer Science, Bachelor’s Degree, Computer Science at University of Mary Washington
Stackoverflow
259reputation
74kreached
2answers
0questions
Github Skills (29)
markdown10
notebook10
javascript10
restructuredtext10
sphinx-doc10
python10
jinja210
sphinx10
technical-writing10
net10
css10
dotnet10
mkdocs10
asp-net10
api-documentation10
Programming languages (20)
Github contributions (5)
writethedocs/www
Nov 2014 - Jan 2023
The main website for Write the Docs.
Role in this project:
Technical Writer
Technical WriterContributions:345 reviews, 2771 commits, 896 PRs in 8 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Eric primarily focused on refactoring and improving documentation, including the removal of legacy templates and the addition of content and code snippets, particularly for the writing day and various related pages. Their work improved the user experience and the structure of the documentation. This user's contributions were focused on improving accessibility by adding text and images to make our documentation better.
sphinx-docsphinx
readthedocs/sphinx-autoapi
Mar 2015 - Jul 2019
A new approach to API documentation in Sphinx.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:299 commits, 62 PRs, 177 pushes in 4 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Eric primarily focused on enhancing the API documentation capabilities of the Sphinx AutoAPI project, specifically by adding support for the .NET domain. Their commits reveal the implementation of various .NET object representations such as classes, enums, structs, and methods, along with corresponding template updates. The user also introduced features like GitHub linking and improved toctree/index generation, improving the overall user experience and functionality of the AutoAPI documentation system.
apipythonapproachsphinx-extensionapi-documentation
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