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I do both and it’s not hard, it’s work and people have gotten lazy and don’t do work anymore they just write and read BS on the net and call it true and vote pe

I do both and it’s not hard, it’s work and people have gotten lazy and don’t do work anymore they just write and read BS on the net and call it true and vote people down for telling the truth.

sjaak 6y ago
Lazy? Where I'm from we call it agile. You know. Scrum and stuff.
zaat 6y ago
If it was easy lazy people would do it, just like they write code.
- thethethethe 6y ago
  Lazy people do the minimum amount of work required of them, not the easiest work. Generally, documentation is useful, not required or business critical
seiferteric 6y ago
I think the answer is just to have more people in the loop. Why do I have to write code, tests, documentation, dealing with jira tickets etc... In the old days, people had secretaries to handle some tasks. I would gladly exchange lower pay for having more people to spread out these tasks.
- loopz 6y ago
  If it was that easy, there would indeed be a silver bullet: Secretaries could write specs that would compile into magical code solving every problem. They'd also infer user tutorials and data flow diagrams from machine code, to help out fresh blood. What people can do it help allievate the gaps, but sadly, they're not geeting much help from managers and business people this time 'round either.
hrbf 6y ago
So do I. I even write documentation for personal projects, as a manual to my future self. However, absolutely every team I've ever worked with held a majority view of documentation being unnecessary. Some even mentioned "code as documentation". In the end, they just kept finding justifications for not writing documentation or even proper code comments. Three months after some solution was written, they couldn't explain the thinking behind it or even all the deep dependencies and magic return values because the person who had written the solution had left the team. Even then they were unwilling to see how documentation would have helped. This repeated with every freaking team I have ever worked with. The only documentation any of those projects had was the one I created while figuring out the code base. I observed a fundamental laziness in written communication in many developers and to this day I find it puzzling. I sometimes write down a draft of some solution just by myself, like I would explain it to another developer. More often than not, this helps me in highlighting inconsistencies or errors in my thinking.
Corazoor 6y ago
I can agree that writing documentation is certainly more boring than writing code, and lazyness tends to play a role in the willingness to complete boring tasks. But there are many legitimate reasons why one would clarify it as "harder" than programming: - It requires a different skillset, namely writing. - It is not uncommon for non-english shops to have a policy of documentation in english. That might be sensible, but complicates the task even further. - In programming, it suffers from the same problems as math: Natural language is more often than not unsuited to express entirely abstract concepts, at least in concise and easily understandable ways. - Conversely, natural language often lacks the necessary precision to talk about technical details. - To alleviate all these problems with language somewhat, you might opt to use diagrams. Which requires yet another skillset. - It requires time. And quite a lot of it actually. Usually more than you need for the actual programming task. This is why most managers care way less about documentation than they should: They know very well that it detracts time from actual programming tasks. So sure, people tend to be lazy, but there are certainly good reasons why that happens more often in this area of our work than in others.

I do both and it’s not hard, it’s work and people have gotten lazy and don’t do work anymore they just write and read BS on the net and call it true and vote people down for telling the truth.

sjaak 6y ago

Lazy? Where I'm from we call it agile. You know. Scrum and stuff.

zaat 6y ago

If it was easy lazy people would do it, just like they write code.

thethethethe 6y ago
Lazy people do the minimum amount of work required of them, not the easiest work. Generally, documentation is useful, not required or business critical

seiferteric 6y ago

I think the answer is just to have more people in the loop. Why do I have to write code, tests, documentation, dealing with jira tickets etc... In the old days, people had secretaries to handle some tasks. I would gladly exchange lower pay for having more people to spread out these tasks.

loopz 6y ago
If it was that easy, there would indeed be a silver bullet: Secretaries could write specs that would compile into magical code solving every problem. They'd also infer user tutorials and data flow diagrams from machine code, to help out fresh blood. What people can do it help allievate the gaps, but sadly, they're not geeting much help from managers and business people this time 'round either.

hrbf 6y ago

So do I. I even write documentation for personal projects, as a manual to my future self. However, absolutely every team I've ever worked with held a majority view of documentation being unnecessary. Some even mentioned "code as documentation". In the end, they just kept finding justifications for not writing documentation or even proper code comments. Three months after some solution was written, they couldn't explain the thinking behind it or even all the deep dependencies and magic return values because the person who had written the solution had left the team. Even then they were unwilling to see how documentation would have helped. This repeated with every freaking team I have ever worked with. The only documentation any of those projects had was the one I created while figuring out the code base. I observed a fundamental laziness in written communication in many developers and to this day I find it puzzling. I sometimes write down a draft of some solution just by myself, like I would explain it to another developer. More often than not, this helps me in highlighting inconsistencies or errors in my thinking.

Corazoor 6y ago

I can agree that writing documentation is certainly more boring than writing code, and lazyness tends to play a role in the willingness to complete boring tasks. But there are many legitimate reasons why one would clarify it as "harder" than programming: - It requires a different skillset, namely writing. - It is not uncommon for non-english shops to have a policy of documentation in english. That might be sensible, but complicates the task even further. - In programming, it suffers from the same problems as math: Natural language is more often than not unsuited to express entirely abstract concepts, at least in concise and easily understandable ways. - Conversely, natural language often lacks the necessary precision to talk about technical details. - To alleviate all these problems with language somewhat, you might opt to use diagrams. Which requires yet another skillset. - It requires time. And quite a lot of it actually. Usually more than you need for the actual programming task. This is why most managers care way less about documentation than they should: They know very well that it detracts time from actual programming tasks. So sure, people tend to be lazy, but there are certainly good reasons why that happens more often in this area of our work than in others.