Why Documentation Matters

Open source programming framework projects need a documentation strategy. Not something that’s tacked on at the end. Not a quick brush through the feature-set in a release notes document somewhere. A real, from-the-beginning, serious strategy that’s integrated with the development strategy. I don’t care if that amounts to inline documentation that gets parsed through something like rdoc , or if it’s provided on a website or in a help file. I just care that it exists. Most developers, myself included, like writing code. We don’t particularly enjoy breaking down our code for new users. It requires creative thinking. It often requires some additional reflection on our own code so that we can explain it to people who weren’t sitting next to us as we designed something. So it’s hard. For some, very hard. But that doesn’t change the fact that failing to include documentation can hold back otherwise good projects . Th...