[CREATE] LGM11 panel proposal: attracting new devs

[Louis Desjardins]

2011/2/20 Gregory Pittman <gpittman at iglou.com>

> One hopes that it can progress in tandem with the code, by necessity a bit
> behind cutting-edge features


Actually, shouldn't that be the way around? Documenting is thinking. We can
look at this from two ends. Case #1 The program exists and it is (partially)
or (not well) documented, hence the necessity to explain afterwards — and
this comes naturally, yes, behind. Case #2 We can think of a more integrated
way of doing things where any idea or feature or enhancement that makes it
into the application is first well-thought of, defined, described, thus
truly documented before it is actually coded.


> , and like code should have a modular structure, ideally documentation
> should have a structure that allows for easy multipurposing and reuse of
> materials.


There is obviously no need to rewrite everything when a new version of the
application is released. And if there is, then this means that it is not an
update but a rewrite of the application or a total change in the way it
behaves.


> I don't think we are there yet, but I would like to see us move in that
> direction. Already we have been a more active participant in documentation
> updates and "bugfixes" coming with svn code updates and bugfixes
>

Which is good and which also proves the “doc first code next” approach to be
efficient.

Louis

>
> Greg.
>
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