Four Tips for Dealing with Poorly Documented Libraries

Every developer has had to deal with the struggle of sifting through documentation that is incomplete, incoherent, outdated, or simply non-existent. Whether it’s libraries, frameworks, or platforms, the presence of good documentation can mean the difference between success and failure. The absence of good documentation is a serious enough downside to justify avoiding a certain […]

Using Cookbook Documentation to Pass on Knowledge

Documentation is hard. Like writing code, it is a delicate balancing act of packing information into a format that is both very dense and very readable. Going too far in either direction severely limits its usefulness. While ramping down a client project recently, I was asked to provide documentation and guides for the JavaScript application […]

Sticky Documentation, Part 2: Source Control History as Documentation

Last week, I introduced a concept I’m calling “sticky documentation” and reviewed a few ways that we can make the most of the “stickiest” documentation we have: the code. Today, I’d like to talk about another form of “sticky” documentation: source control history.

Framework Docs Are a First-Class Citizen

Documentation is a crucial part of any good API or framework. Despite this importance, it often gets neglected and treated as an afterthought. I recently asked another developer how he always managed to put together such well-thought-out and complete documentation. His response was: “Documentation Driven Design (DDD): if your API feels clunky to document, it’s […]

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documentation

Four Tips for Dealing with Poorly Documented Libraries

Using Cookbook Documentation to Pass on Knowledge

Sticky Documentation, Part 2: Source Control History as Documentation

Framework Docs Are a First-Class Citizen