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Discussion on: As a developer, I hate ... ?

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mtrussell profile image
Matt Trussell

I guess the thing that frustrates me most, and most often, is bad documentation.

If you have a project that is used by developers, there should be really good, in-depth instructions on how to do all of the things your software is able to do. We shouldn't have to go to stackoverflow or reddit or dev.to to figure out how to use your gem, plugin, api, or whatever.

If you take the time to build something that developers are going to use, please take the time to document all the use cases. Some short video walkthroughs wouldn't hurt either.

And, I guess this goes for consumer facing products as well. If there are any not-so-intuitive intricacies at all, take a day or two to create a how-to guide with images and video and a faq.

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corgidevs profile image
Not MyRealName

Mood. It isn't a sign of quality if have to inspect the code of a library in order to be able to use it. You wouldn't reverse engineer an IC just to know how to use it either. (By the way, Microchip data sheets /manuals are gems when it comes to documentation 🥰)

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bekbrace profile image
Bek Brace • Edited

Thanks Matt for sharing your professional experience, certainly documentation could play a critical a role in the success or failure of your project.
You code often with Ruby, yes ?

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mtrussell profile image
Matt Trussell

Yes, primarily with Ruby on Rails. A lot of JS too, but most of my day-to-day is ruby.

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harithzainudin profile image
Muhammad Harith Zainudin

a bad documentation is a nightmare for programmer😵😵
It makes us keep guessing on how to use it. If it works, hoorayy. If it not for a few days, off we go then to another function, solution or libraries =,=