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<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.juliobiason.me"><h1>Julio Biason .Me 4.3</h1></a>
<p class="lead">Old school dev living in a 2.0 dev world</p>
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<li class="sidebar-nav-item"><a href="&#x2F;">English</a></li>
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<h1 class="post-title">Things I Learnt The Hard Way - Documentation Is a Love Letter To Your Future Self</h1>
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2019-06-21
<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/books/">#books</a>
<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/things-i-learnt/">#things i learnt</a>
<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/documentation/">#documentation</a>
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<p>We all know writing the damn docs for functions and classes and modules is a
pain in the backside. But realizing what you were thinking when you wrote the
function will save your butt in the future.</p>
<span id="continue-reading"></span>
<p>When I say that it will save your butt, I don't mean the documentation will
tell you something like &quot;Here are the lotto numbers in 2027&quot;<sup class="footnote-reference"><a href="#1">1</a></sup> or &quot;If John
complains about your future code review, here is some shit he did in the
past&quot;.</p>
<p>I mean, it will explain how the <em>flow</em> of your code is expected to do. Imaging
this: pick your code and replace every function call to its documentation. Can
you understand what it is expected by reading that? If you can,
congratulations, you won't have a problem in the future; if you can't... well,
I have some bad news for you...</p>
<p>One point that may come here is &quot;Code is its own documentation&quot; or
&quot;self-documenting code&quot;. I do understand, and yes, simpler functions may make
the documentation redundant (for example, if you notice that you need a
function that multiplies two numbers -- and only do that -- giving it a
description of &quot;Multiples two numbers&quot; may look redundant), but you have to
ask yourself <em>why</em> you needed such simple function. <em>Why</em> it exists? <em>Where</em>
it sits in the general data flow?</p>
<p>Another thing you can document: rarely used functions. One example is Java
Collectors: In Java, you can create a stream of data, which you can apply
transformations and such and, in the end, you may put the resulting collection
of data into another structure -- a list, for example. The thing is,
collecting to a list is pretty common, but collecting into a map, with a
function as key and another value as value, splitting the result into two
different data blocks, is not that common. Because it is uncommon to see such
collector, it is a good idea to add tips on what each option is.</p>
<p>That's the things you need to document.</p>
<div class="footnote-definition" id="1"><sup class="footnote-definition-label">1</sup>
<p>Please, don't make me revise this in 2027... :(</p>
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&lt;&lt; <a href="&#x2F;books&#x2F;things-i-learnt&#x2F;languages-tests">Good Languages Come With Tests</a>
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<a href="&#x2F;books&#x2F;things-i-learnt&#x2F;document-is-contract">The Function Documentation Is Its Contract</a> &gt;&gt;
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