[thelist] Re: A Different POV

Ben Phillips ben at inchima.com
Mon Feb 4 10:16:00 CST 2002


> The reason(s) that I encounter so much is that people who design/develop
> web sites for a living are;
>
> a. People who have never written code before and have not yet
> learned about
> standards or documentation. As an old (and just got older yesterday)...

happy birthday to you.

> b. People who have written code before, but hated the restraint of having
> to justify or explain everything that they do, or saw documentation as a
> waste of time. After all, if it works, why tell  you how they got it to do
> that? So they turned their coding loose into an area where no one agreed
> about anything, but since stuff worked it was all good. And nobody really
> paid attention.

this is a very valid point. in fact, when i first taught myself programming
i fell into this group. however, the real world soon put stop to that, and
documentation became essential.

in fact, my first programming job had to be completed in 24 hours. okay, it
was a bit basic, but i was told that i had to get the code done asap. which
meant no documentation. i think time to release is a key factor in whether
documentation gets done or not. if we all had infinite time to produce the
software, then it would probably be possible to fit the documentation time
in there somewhere.

> I am sure that there other types of people who make up this group, these
> are just the ones I run into. I also very rarely find anyone who writes
> code who likes to perform documentation duties, including myself.

oh but i love it... ;o)

> Perhaps I should write an article or series about how to make
> documentation
> as painless as possible while explaining its benefits. Would it be
> preaching to the choir? Hmmmm...[*scratching chin*] perhaps a
> documentation
> standards thing similar to webstandards.org? <sarcasm>Nah...it would
> require too much documentation!</sarcasm>

the tip is fantastic, but i for one want more! if you want to produce an
article on software documentation, then i would love to read it... ;o)

benji
inchima.com




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