Documentation

Wed Jul 27 07:45:43 PDT 2005

On 27.07.2005, at 16:28, Jan Grant wrote:
Never said that.  But who should keep the docs updated if 
programmers commit here and there?  It's pretty hard to follow 
changes then.  The programmer has the knowledge on what he changed.
Technical writers.  They are the ones that will harass the 
programmer with relevant questions.
Iff they exist.
You need the right way to express this: which is, if a person wants to
contribute, they ought to do so in the manner they feel best suits 
them.
_Good_ documentation shouldn't be viewed as a less valuable 
contribution than good code*.
Never said something different.  I absolutely agree.

If people have the skill to approach the journalistic task - that is, 
to ask the right questions of developers (and to lower
the doc burden on developers), then I'd hope most developers would be
willing to be approached, perhaps to run an eye over any resulting docs
looking for inaccuracies. Both parties just have to approach the task 
in an open-minded fashion, with hopefully their shared goal (an 
improved system) in mind.
I expect developers to cooperate with people writing docs.  But(!), as 
there are few people writing docs, developers need to document 
themselves until there are enough doc people so that all changes can be 
documented by those.

cheers
  simon
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