> The author does not complain just about writing documentation, but about writing an unproportionate amount of it that presumably isn't being read by anyone. I've seen that happen. People writing essays about software that are bound to get outdated and will never be read by anyone. In systems that are disconnected from the source code.
This has been the norm more often than not in most companies, especially larger ones. Hence the Agile Manifesto, written by people who've been there again and again.
And still, working in company that does not document what the system does, it sux massively more.
Because end result is that no one knows how to use our own software. You dont know what it is supposed to do, so it is impossible to keep that stuff working. It takes ridiculous amount of time to configure anything or reproduce bugs, because you need multiple calls to find the one person who barely remembers.
Also agile manifesto is 20 years old. Agile is literally what most large dysfunctional companies do these days. It does not have no new solutions to actual real problems of companies, because it is old.
The comment I replied to says "inappropriate amount of documentation", the Agile Manifesto says "comprehensive documentation".
That's the problem. Months, if not years, spent on pages after pages of comprehensive documentation that does not add any value and is obsolete by the time you start writing actual code.
Lastly, the age of something is not a relevant criterion. Not much has actually changed over the last 20 years. What has changed is the explosion of web-related software, which is actually the best suited for the ideas behind the Agile Manifesto.
> That's the problem. Months, if not years, spent on pages after pages of comprehensive documentation that does not add any value and is obsolete by the time you start writing actual code.
This picture is not any real company I ever worked in or real company I heard of from friends. Literally, not even before agile manifesto.
> Not much has actually changed over the last 20 years. What has changed is the explosion of web-related software, which is actually the best suited for ideas behind Agile.
That is not actually true, really. A lot did changed.
This also glosses over something else. Comprehensive documentation can even be really well documented code!
And in small corps, there's the "guy who wrote it" was "hit by a bus" scenario. It doesn't matter how dilligent, or how faithful someone may be when they leave, eg walking a replacement through the codebase can't happen of you're dead!
This is how I document. I think about being hit by a bus, and what would this corp do? A replacement hiree do? See?
Not doing this is, IMO, should be criminal. Like a CFO not keeping books.
This has been the norm more often than not in most companies, especially larger ones. Hence the Agile Manifesto, written by people who've been there again and again.