Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Software Is about Developing Knowledge More than Writing Code" The company I work for uses Scrum. They consider the User Stories + the code to be everything you need. I struggle with this, but my manager says they don't want to get tied up doing documentation "because it goes out of date". Beside, they are being Agile which "prefers working code over comprehensive documentation". I am wondering what other companie…
Many years ago, I worked for a company where we were writing complex distributed telecom software and they had a wiki for documenting the system. I spent a few weeks meticulously documenting everything I did and anything that was touched by it (including defining all of the industry jargon and such). It was a great way to get a quick understanding of any part of the system, but I was the only person keeping it up to…
Me too, but I still feel that saying "documentation quickly becomes outdated" and refusing to write any, is not that different from saying "software quickly becomes full of bugs" and refusing to write unit tests. Yes, if you believe that something is doomed, and therefore you refuse to even try, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Yes, documentation quickly becomes outdated, if no one updates it. Duh. If a person creates/modifies a part of code, they should also create/modify the corresponding documentation accordingly. (And the person reviewing the code should also review the docs.) If you don't do it, then yes, obviously, the documentation becomes outdated. Did you expect it to update magically by itself?
If you believe that documentation is useless in principle, go ahead and don't write it. Then you won't have to maintain it. Also, make sure to include memory tests to your interview process. If you believe that documentation is useful, write it, and maintain it. But if you have a documentation that you never update, you get the worst of both worlds.