Duty to Document (2023)
nicolasbouliane.com
Duty to Document (2023)
1–10 of 70 posts
Re: Duty to Document (2023)
#2The older you get the more you realize that every popular piece of software got that way not because it was necessarily the best, but because it was the best documented. Often the tail wags the dog here as well. The software becomes better as it is documented.
Re: Duty to Document (2023)
#3I would love to document everything in my wheelhouse if I could. Unfortunately I don’t have the time to do so due to unreasonable workloads and lack of staff/resources. I firmly believe in a work/life balance and have to cram everything into a 40 hour week. I constantly have to put out fires and treat everything like triage. The most important stuff is documented to the “T”.
Re: Duty to Document (2023)
#4As someone who likes to tinker with code and learn new things but finds it very difficult to actually bring a project to a level of polish where I feel happy announcing it to the world, I have found that sharing knowledge is an easy and effective way to contribute back to the commons. I've written a small number of blog posts sharing things I've learned during my tinkering, which other people appear to have found quite helpful.
I also think, in some ways, someone who has just learned something is very well placed to educate others about it. There are arguments against that of course - someone who has just taught themselves about a topic may not be aware of the pitfalls or may only know how to do things in a sub-optimal way. But on the other hand, that person still remembers what it was like to not know anything about the topic so I think they can better communicate the basics to others who still don't know anything about it.
Re: Duty to Document (2023)
#5I am continually cognizant of how many personal blogs I encounter that help me learn something I am curious about or solve a niche bug with which I have been struggling. I like to publish things I learn as I go to contribute back; if someone finds what I have written useful, I'm thrilled!
One thing at which I am trying to improve is to document personal coding challenges _as I go_ rather than documenting a finished state. I find it easier to write about something after it is complete rather than in the "messy middle" when I'm trying to come toward a solution. I'm trying to reflect more on the notion that documenting paths that one explored that went nowhere may be equally as valuable as the paths that went somewhere.
Re: Duty to Document (2023)
#6Where can I document things? If I put it on my person blog google won't find it - preferring instead SEO blogspam. If I document something but nobody reads it (including me), then the effort was wasted.
Re: Duty to Document (2023)
#7Where can I document things? If I put it on my person blog google won't find it - preferring instead SEO blogspam. If I document something but nobody reads it (including me), then the effort was wasted.
I agree this is a challenge - Medium used to be okay for this as it could give you good reach, but I feel like it's become overly saturated with low-effort content lately.
Re: Duty to Document (2023)
#8I work at a small finance firm where the projects were ran by one or two people for probably a decade. They didn't rely on databases, or any programming, up until 6 years ago or so and spreadsheets were how they got work done. So when I have to figure out how to do something, I have to click through probably a dozen spreadsheets and track Excel formulas/ad hoc calculations. There's no documentation, presumably because they didn't anticipate anyone else taking over the project. Or maybe it was due to time constraint.
Anyway, I'm not documenting anything either. There's too much work.
Re: Duty to Document (2023)
#9Where can I document things? If I put it on my person blog google won't find it - preferring instead SEO blogspam. If I document something but nobody reads it (including me), then the effort was wasted.
Codidact, Stack Overflow, or your own blog are all good options. In my experience plenty of problems are niche enough to rank highly in Google for the few people searching for them.
Re: Duty to Document (2023)
#10Where can I document things? If I put it on my person blog google won't find it - preferring instead SEO blogspam. If I document something but nobody reads it (including me), then the effort was wasted.
I recommend writing on your personal website! You will own your content and you can design the site and the user experience as you want.
Search is only one method through which someone can find what you write. I read a lot of personal websites that I found out about through friends, HN, and links from one site to another.