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"Don't know how"? [A] flaw in human nature is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance (Vonnegut). Most free software projects are entir
by firethief 9y ago
"Don't know how"? [A] flaw in human nature is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance (Vonnegut). Most free software projects are entirely built by volunteers contributing what they want to. I don't know how much offering classes on "how" would help; it feels like leading a horse onto a boat.
Also, the poll seems a suspect way to support the idea that more documentation is justified; I agree with that idea, and TFA has other arguments supporting the point, but I question the utility of the poll as an argument. Developers would like better documentation of the libraries they are using, but they would. In a Pareto-optimal scenario where exactly the right amount of work was put into documentation, developers would still want better documentation. And I would want a pony.
- klodolph 9y agoYes, software developers don't want to write documentation. But it's also hard, and we're also unskilled at writing documentation. We're quick to say that it's a problem of motivation because nobody wants to admit that these soft skills are actually hard!
- RealityVoid 9y agoI've seen this wierd issue in companies(not open-souce, just plain normal companies with minimal OS involvement) where I'd send decent technical writeups to people who sould understand them, with issues that affected them but they didn't... friggin... read... them. I think maybe this problem is also present in OS where, you write stuff but get a lot of questions back that could be solved by people reading the friggin' documentation. Maybe this makes people feel it's pointless.