Programmers and Documentation?

Programmers and Documentation?

26 Aug, 2023

Why do programmers dismiss documentation? #

My theory:

Documentation is hard. Documentation is about communication between humans, and oh my, communication is hard. So, what better way to get rid of this hardship than simply dismissing the importance of it. Programmers are in this mode subconsciously.

Updated: 29.05.2026

With the latest AI capabilities, I believe that it has been pretty easy for programmers to generate good documentation. Of course, the ’easy’ and ‘good’ are in the context of

  1. who is consuming these docs, and
  2. how capable the programmer is (to make appropriate use of AI).