Documentation

in

Computer Programming

In any programming task, the documentation of the work is of paramount importance. For this purpose, the programmer usually adds comments to his or her code so as to detail what he or she is doing. It is not only a way of making things easier and more convenient for someone who is to modify, alter, or make any changes to the program. Also, it helps the programmer to remember his or her thoughts, intentions, and purpose when writing the program. Saying “No Comment” as a comment on one’s program might work for politicians but not for programmers looking to make life easier for themselves and for others. A lot of programmers find the aspect of documentation a tedious, time-consuming, and annoying part of programming. Many a time their code seems to be self-explanatory to them and convenient enough for anyone to make changes to at will, making documentation not so necessary.

But the reality is, writing a program is much like writing anything, one simply cannot assume what the writer may have been thinking to fill any gaps that remain and have not been explained in a certain piece of code.

But often it happens that even the person who wrote a code cannot understand it a few weeks after writing it, so to expect a stranger to do that would make even less sense. But if there is a succinct explanation accompanying the code it may help the writer as well as anyone who is looking to modify the programmer to a great extent and save a lot of everyone’s precious time.

Software companies know that around eight percent of their costs in terms of software projects are related to maintenance. The industry standard is one bug every two thousand lines of code. For instance, Windows Vista is written with nearly fifty million lines of code, but Microsoft ensured that bugs were limited to less than the industry average due to documentation rules.