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Re: "Documentation by paper"
- From: kenner at vlsi1 dot ultra dot nyu dot edu (Richard Kenner)
- To: Joe dot Buck at synopsys dot com
- Cc: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org
- Date: Wed, 4 Feb 04 13:07:40 EST
- Subject: Re: "Documentation by paper"
In my experience, the best documention is written by someone with good
technical writing skill as well as some programming knowledge who
initially doesn't understand the code, but who learns what he or she needs
to know by a dialog with the author.
I agree you can develope *adequate* documentation that way, but strongly
disagree that it's the *best*. When you do this after-the-fact, the author
will likely have forgotten many things that were important to have known
when writing the code. Also, it's very hard to really find out everything
significant in this "game of 20 questions" approach.