An outdated documentation is often referred to as “documentation debt” or “tech debt” in software development.
Learning from documentation is far better than falling into tutorial hell. But learning from outdated documentation is even worse.
Recently, I have been relying on documentation rather than watching tutorials for learning purposes. I am currently trying to understand the codebase of a large project for open-source contribution. For that, I had to clone and build it by referring to the documentation provided.
Just building the project became a hassle for me — the documentation was nearly 8–10 years old. From outdated compiler versions to non-existent libraries and dependencies, everything became a challenge for a beginner like me.
This problem took me days to solve. Finding newer versions of each library, reaching out to maintainers to confirm compatibility, and searching for missing dependencies from alternate sources turned into a constant cycle of trial and error. It consumed a lot of time and energy — both mine and the maintainer’s — as we worked through each build issue and tracked down missing libraries.
The project itself is very interesting, but over time, all these hurdles made me lose interest. And that’s exactly what happens when documentation isn’t updated regularly.
Up-to-date documentation plays a crucial role in improving both user and developer experience, ensuring they continue using and contributing to your product in the long run.
Top comments (2)
Thanks for sharing this—felt every line. I’ve watched new contributors bounce after spending days wrestling with decade-old setup steps and missing deps. We’ve been experimenting with an AI workflow (Everdone) that drafts PR summaries & setup docs from the actual changes so things don’t drift. Not perfect, but it keeps people in ‘build mode’. If a project tried that, would you give it another shot?
Thanks a lot for reading and sharing this! Outdated setup steps really do push new contributors away. Your workflow with Everdone sounds interesting like auto-generated PR summaries and setup docs could definitely reduce that drift. If a project maintained docs that closely, yes, I’d absolutely give it another shot.