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jelte

@mhoye Nobody pays for docs and error messages.

1 Nov 2023 at 13:50 | Wall-to-wall | Open on mastodon.nl
5 comments
mhoye

@jelte oh, they sure as hell pay for not having them.

1 Nov 2023 at 13:54 | Open on mastodon.social
Graydon

@mhoye @jelte I would argue that the docs and error messages are symptoms of "give this to a user; have them do the thing" not happening.

(Especially because STARTING to do that is inevitably slow, painful, and annoying.)

1 Nov 2023 at 16:06 | Open on canada.masto.host
Liana :v_trans: :v_kirb:

@jelte exactly what I was about to answer when I came here.

I've seen entire massive years long enterprise projects with barely any docs.

It's the same thing as with tech debt, product people in charge only care about shipping features. And for open source, no one contributes to docs, and the few people making the thing are too busy making the thing

1 Nov 2023 at 14:56 | Open on tech.lgbt
Stacey Campbell

@jelte @mhoye I worked at SCO starting 1989. They had a huge doc department, and the various SCO Unix products went out with a massive documentation set. It was a big expense. archive.org/embed/bitsavers_sc

1 Nov 2023 at 16:06 | Open on aus.social
jelte

@stacey_campbell @mhoye I worked for ISC and they had staff whose function was solely to maintain documentation too (i.e. write, improve, help teams write, etc). Seems to be the exception rather than the rule. But TBH I was mostly thinking of how nobody stops using software, or chooses to replace it, when their error messages and documentation are garbage. It's not even a consideration.

2 Nov 2023 at 9:28 | Open on mastodon.nl
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