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Good point but writing and maintaining README.md files for your solo projects is nothing like writing proper docs for big projects with multiple contributors an
by beebeepka 4y ago
Good point but writing and maintaining README.md files for your solo projects is nothing like writing proper docs for big projects with multiple contributors and users. That's a full time job, isn't it?
Writing non-code is easy and fun to me - I used to do it for a living - but when I am pressed to deliver features, documentation takes a backseat. Also, I've never felt like documenting other people's code
- simonw 4y agoThe two largest projects that I write documentation for are https://docs.datasette.io/ https://docs.datasette.io/ and https://sqlite-utils.datasette.io/ https://sqlite-utils.datasette.io/ - they're both big projects with multiple contributors, though most of the commits are still from me. I find the same approach I take to READMEs for smaller projects scales up pretty well: any time I make a change to one of my larger projects I ensure that the documentation is updated as part of that change. If I accept a PR from someone without documentation I'll follow up by adding the docs for it myself in the next commit. I think that's more reasonable than demanding people add documentation if it's not necessarily their core skill set. Honestly, I'd love to experience working with a professional technical writer on this kind of thing, but that's not something that's happened at any point in my career to date!