Documentation is the bane of every developer's existence, a necessary evil that takes precious time away from the joys of coding. It's the equivalent of being forced to eat your vegetables before you can have dessert, except the vegetables are bland technical writing and the dessert is the thrill of solving complex problems with elegant code.

How to use it in a sentence

• "I can't join the team for happy hour tonight, I'm stuck writing documentation for the new API endpoints."

• "I know our startup is trying to move fast and break things, but apparently legal says we need documentation for compliance reasons. 🙄"

If you actually want to learn more...

• The Almighty Thud: Martin Fowler discusses the potential drawbacks of excessive documentation in software projects. Read more

• Code As Documentation: Fowler explains how agile methods position code as the primary documentation, emphasizing the importance of writing clear and readable code. Read more

• Podcast on Agility and Architecture: In this podcast, experts discuss various aspects of architecture in agile projects, including the role of documentation. Listen here

Note: the Developer Dictionary is in Beta. Please direct feedback to skye@statsig.com.