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It does. I think you know this given how you phrased the last part, but I do want a mount a tiny defense of Doxygen, here: it's just as easy to write the same l
by abathur 8y ago
It does. I think you know this given how you phrased the last part, but I do want a mount a tiny defense of Doxygen, here: it's just as easy to write the same low-effort documentation in a simple comment, docstring, RST, markdown, docbook, latex, etc.
I think it's often a symptom of things like: just trying to tick the box (i.e. doc-building rules that only include "documented" members, satisfy a doc linter/coverage tool), and being too close to the code to imagine what will and won't make sense to unfamiliar users.
- taneq 8y agoOh, absolutely. Doxygen is a good tool - possibly TOO good, because it allows lazy devs to produce something that looks like documentation with almost zero effort. There are plenty of other ways for them to achieve the same goal, though. I think your "trying to tick the box" cause is most likely, especially because that often results in "get the newbie to do it" or even "outsource it to India" where the person writing the docs has no idea what to write and so they just translate the function prototype into English. You can definitely also get it from being too close to the code (or to the problem domain) - I looked up the help for a form in my new accounting package and the help literally says "fill out the form"! Super helpful when populating columns like "Amount".