Yeah the documentation (if it even exists) of most projects is usually clearly written by people intimately familiar with the project and then never reviewed to make sure it makes sense for people unfamiliar with it. But writing good detailed documentation is also really hard, especially for a specialist because many nontrivial things are trivial to them and they believe what they’re writing is thorough and well explained even though it actually isn’t.
Bold of you to assume I know how to read!
This is why Technical Writer is a full time job.
It’s also why the humanities are important. Stemlords who brag about not doing literature classes write terrible documentation.
My CS major required me to take two upper division English classes and I think they helped me more in my career than my upper division CS classes. People forget that documentation is for ourselves too
I’m really thankful that I had a great English teacher in high school, and that my degree required a technical writing class. Being able to write a coherent email got me further in my career than the technical stuff I learned in college.
I completely agree. Most peer feedbacks that I get mention my documentation. It has helped me so much
I think this is why the “my code documents itself” attitude appeals, even though it’s almost never enough. Most developers just can’t write, nor do they want to.
The problem with “It’s self-documenting” is that there are inevitably questions about what it says, and there’s no additional resources to pull from.
“my code documents itself” and “no, our CI system doesn’t upload the source jars to Artifactory, why?”
Maybe, just maybe, people have different strengths and weaknesses and cooperating around our differences is what makes us succeed.
If you know your weakness is writing documentation, please hire a technical writer.
