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