Technical writing is a bit of a different beast: you’re writing both to instruct first-time readers and to serve as an authoritative reference for people who have read the document or are otherwise already familiar with the subject.

That's a good point. In general prose, I try to avoid a lot of lists and tables precisely because it sort of screams "manual" or something else dry. But, I agree, that it's often easier to parse a bullet list especially in technical writing and other straightforward communication of information.