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So i understand correctly, that your position is "code is the documentation"? Over time im inclined to value human written documentation. Especially when thing

So i understand correctly, that your position is "code is the documentation"? Over time im inclined to value human written documentation. Especially when things involve integrations of multiple systems. I had real cases, where two parties point at code and say their code is correct. And in isolation code looks correct. But when time comes to integrate these systems. It breaks. And then if you have human readable document where intentions and expectations are specified it's much easier to come to common (working) solution. Not all languages have capability to express complex intentions so code as documentation does not work most of the time.

alpaca128 4y ago
Code as documentation feels like a good idea because code is the only reliable source of truth. But it also assumes that code can comprehensively express all assumptions and other info, which sounds more like wishful thinking. Auto-generated API docs combined with handwritten documentation that covers what can't be expressed in code and includes some useful examples seems like the right approach to me. In practice that's the kind of doc I tend to have the best experience with. For example the Rust stdlib docs are auto-generated but the language also supports notes and (automatically unit-tested) examples in docstrings which means the API docs are filled with explanations & examples and mentions what assumptions are made about inputs.
- hitchstory 4y ago
  I built this framework coz while I didn't believe in "code as documentation" I did believe that example based specifications, tests and documentation were all sort of the same thing (triality): https://hitchdev.com/hitchstory/ https://hitchdev.com/hitchstory/ The difference between this and behave/cucumber is that the A) specification language allows for more complex representations and B) there's a templating step to generate readable documentation.
- eevilspock 4y ago
  I'm not sure if you're saying that rust stdlib docs do this but documentation where all the examples are themselves runnable as tests and included in the CI test suite solves so many problems.
  - steveklabnik 4y ago
    Not just the stdlib, the documentation tool itself supports this, so it's the case for any Rust package that writes documentation.
magicalhippo 4y ago
Code is documentation, but it only tells you a part of the story. Good comments can explain why, but without writing comment essays it's usually not sufficient. And, as you note, when integrating systems you need more than just the code and comments, since the code might not even be written with the other system in mind.
kapep 4y ago
I think they mean "test code is documentation". For example if there's a unit test that expects an error for a certain input, it serves as documentation that this kind of input is not allowed. It not always feasible to document every little edge case in natural language and keep it in sync with your code. If you "document" edge cases as tests, they _have_ to be in sync with your code. It shouldn't replace traditional documentation though and is better suited for internal components and not for public API.
randomdata 4y ago
No. Your documentation is your documentation. It documents your code. It is not your code. If the documentation can also be interpreted by machine to validate what it claims is true you have a nice side benefit, but not the reason for writing your documentation.
pjerem 4y ago
Same. I’m sick of people escaping writing documentation by saying that "code is the doc" and in the meantime, writing unreadable code abstracted over dozens of code files. They almost convinced me somewhere in my career. But the hard truth I learnt is that most people are saying this because they aren’t capable of verbalizing what they are programming. If your "code is doc", it should be extremely easy to add a little sentence above your method to explain what it does. And no, doc doesn’t stale. If your documentation isn’t up to what your function does, it’s probably because you should have written a brand new function instead of changing a function’s behavior.
- arkh 4y ago
  > I’m sick of people escaping writing documentation First level of documentation would be specifications. Which can then be used to write tests. But in many, many shops "Agile" means "we don't do specs anymore, woohoo!".
- rightbyte 4y ago
  Not writing docs is a sort of hazing. Also job security.
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  > But the hard truth I learnt is that most people are saying this because they aren’t capable of verbalizing what they are programming. I completely agree with you, ie right now doing bunch of data migration code that is awful 200 lines on first look, but does quite clever transformations, handles various data corner cases, manages lots of threads, is already quite optimized (had 30x speed increase just over last week's state and not yet done with it) etc. and... is full of little green one-liners explaining why certain logic is happening, why at given place, and not elsewhere, and how it helps later in the code. Its even one-off migration, and its mostly for me only. But I still put comments in, have enough experience to know I will keep using those comments in further optimizations, and I know by heart that many one-off efforts end up being re-used later. Code dense with logic shouldn't require you to re-read it all to have constant full mental model of it and all its branching and possibilities just because you want to tweak it a bit. The important point is to evolve those comments with code, otherwise they become worse than no comments at all. This is where most folks hit the wall - they are simply too lazy or undisciplined for that.

alpaca128 4y ago

Code as documentation feels like a good idea because code is the only reliable source of truth. But it also assumes that code can comprehensively express all assumptions and other info, which sounds more like wishful thinking. Auto-generated API docs combined with handwritten documentation that covers what can't be expressed in code and includes some useful examples seems like the right approach to me. In practice that's the kind of doc I tend to have the best experience with. For example the Rust stdlib docs are auto-generated but the language also supports notes and (automatically unit-tested) examples in docstrings which means the API docs are filled with explanations & examples and mentions what assumptions are made about inputs.

hitchstory 4y ago
I built this framework coz while I didn't believe in "code as documentation" I did believe that example based specifications, tests and documentation were all sort of the same thing (triality): https://hitchdev.com/hitchstory/ https://hitchdev.com/hitchstory/ The difference between this and behave/cucumber is that the A) specification language allows for more complex representations and B) there's a templating step to generate readable documentation.
eevilspock 4y ago
I'm not sure if you're saying that rust stdlib docs do this but documentation where all the examples are themselves runnable as tests and included in the CI test suite solves so many problems.
- steveklabnik 4y ago
  Not just the stdlib, the documentation tool itself supports this, so it's the case for any Rust package that writes documentation.

magicalhippo 4y ago

Code is documentation, but it only tells you a part of the story. Good comments can explain why, but without writing comment essays it's usually not sufficient. And, as you note, when integrating systems you need more than just the code and comments, since the code might not even be written with the other system in mind.

kapep 4y ago

I think they mean "test code is documentation". For example if there's a unit test that expects an error for a certain input, it serves as documentation that this kind of input is not allowed. It not always feasible to document every little edge case in natural language and keep it in sync with your code. If you "document" edge cases as tests, they _have_ to be in sync with your code. It shouldn't replace traditional documentation though and is better suited for internal components and not for public API.

randomdata 4y ago

No. Your documentation is your documentation. It documents your code. It is not your code. If the documentation can also be interpreted by machine to validate what it claims is true you have a nice side benefit, but not the reason for writing your documentation.

pjerem 4y ago

Same. I’m sick of people escaping writing documentation by saying that "code is the doc" and in the meantime, writing unreadable code abstracted over dozens of code files. They almost convinced me somewhere in my career. But the hard truth I learnt is that most people are saying this because they aren’t capable of verbalizing what they are programming. If your "code is doc", it should be extremely easy to add a little sentence above your method to explain what it does. And no, doc doesn’t stale. If your documentation isn’t up to what your function does, it’s probably because you should have written a brand new function instead of changing a function’s behavior.

arkh 4y ago
> I’m sick of people escaping writing documentation First level of documentation would be specifications. Which can then be used to write tests. But in many, many shops "Agile" means "we don't do specs anymore, woohoo!".
rightbyte 4y ago
Not writing docs is a sort of hazing. Also job security.
saiya-jin 4y ago
> But the hard truth I learnt is that most people are saying this because they aren’t capable of verbalizing what they are programming. I completely agree with you, ie right now doing bunch of data migration code that is awful 200 lines on first look, but does quite clever transformations, handles various data corner cases, manages lots of threads, is already quite optimized (had 30x speed increase just over last week's state and not yet done with it) etc. and... is full of little green one-liners explaining why certain logic is happening, why at given place, and not elsewhere, and how it helps later in the code. Its even one-off migration, and its mostly for me only. But I still put comments in, have enough experience to know I will keep using those comments in further optimizations, and I know by heart that many one-off efforts end up being re-used later. Code dense with logic shouldn't require you to re-read it all to have constant full mental model of it and all its branching and possibilities just because you want to tweak it a bit. The important point is to evolve those comments with code, otherwise they become worse than no comments at all. This is where most folks hit the wall - they are simply too lazy or undisciplined for that.