this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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Programming

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The Grand Unified Theory of Documentation (AKA: Your project needs all 4 types or you have bad documentation) (documentation.divio.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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The mistake most devs make when trying to document their project is that they only make one (maybe two) types of documentation based on a readme template and/or what their mental model of a newcomer needs.

Devs need to be actively taught that:

  1. Good documentation isn't one thing, it's four. To have good documentation, you need all four distinct types of documentation.
  2. What the four types of documentation are (this is discussed in the link)

If you don't have all four types of documentation, you have bad documentation.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I am glad that this issue is being addressed. I think it is also worth mentioning, that it is more worth the time to document your code now, than it is to waste time later, trying to figure out what the code does. Many project leads are unwise when it comes to this, and therefore fail to allocate the proper time. This will inevitably lead to unmaintained/unreadable code later down the road. This is bad for many reasons: You cannot reuse the code, you cannot maintain old code, programmers will become angry, ETC...