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Adding Documentation

Programmers have stereotypically hated doing the documentation. Yet few are the development projects that don't involve documentation. Writing it, I mean. If someone else is to use it, then something must be written. Even if it's notes for user-training.

It's doubley annoying when one of the points of the development was to make the task easier for the end user. Why do I need to document it? Isn't it obvious? Perhaps not - which may suggests the UI might not be up to scratch!

And then there's the problem about how "dumb" to make it. This is the hurdle I've faced before with operator instructions. I don't like instructions insulting me or my intelligence, so I usually write instructions that tend to explain things as they go. Operators find this a hindrance, I've noticed. It seems like they want to stay dumb.

How successful has your documentation been? Is it a chore to do after development? Perhaps you don't need to do it?

Wade Bowmer aka Static

Comments? Email me at static dash page at yceran dot org.