Shame on me - where were my manners!
I forgot to say thank you for an excellent blog post. It’s partly what spurred me to start the study group.
And good luck in your next project after stack!
@Jaap Van der Velde: “(Good) documentation is a description of what the software designer/programmer wanted to write”
Not exactly true. Documentation is a description of what the developer wanted to write when they wrote the documentation. However, the probability that the documentation will skew from revised intentions approaches 1 as the code becomes more mature. The code is the only truth about what a given routine actually does as opposed to what the documentation claims it does. It is the (current) users that dictate what it ought to be doing.
TBH, what is being discussed here are black boxes. If you drop a component into your solution and it works as expected, then the source of the component isn’t necessary. The problem comes when the black box doesn’t do what you expect and you have to figure out why. If the documentation helps to get over your problem, then great but at the end of the day, what really will help get past the problem is the source of the black box. That will truly tell you how the component is actually working.
Well said, but considering that your main platform is Windows it’s also ironic.
Good read. Also another point is that all the really good product companies rely on you reading code for you training! Which is really awesome. Afterall well written code is the best form of documentation there is to a developer!
i am new to codeing. i dont even know how to start it nor what a source is. anyone know where i should start? (been looking for 2 hours but no where teaches me how to code or how to read it.)