On my personal projects, I like writing the documentation.
What I specially like is having the documentation live right next to the software, typically in the same repository.
That way, you have a clear incentive to update it when doing change in the code, and it's also clearly versioned with the software (1000 thanks to read the doc), you can also treat gap in the documentation as bugs.
However, writing good documentation can be really hard. As the developer, you are, at the same time, the best and worst placed person to document. Best because you know exactly how the software is supposed to work, and worst, because you might miss documenting things that seems obvious to you, but not to the user.
Lastly, as a developer, it can be hard to take a step back, and give a higher level view of the documentation, not diving directly into too much details.
For that, having reviewing from an external eye, and feedback from users can be really helpful.
> However, writing good documentation can be really hard. As the developer, you are, at the same time, the best and worst placed person to document. Best because you know exactly how the software is supposed to work, and worst, because you might miss documenting things that seems obvious to you, but not to the user.
This is an important point! That's why I think it's so valuable to constantly have discussions with the users of your products. Not only to improve the products themselves but the documentation and the on-boarding process.
What I specially like is having the documentation live right next to the software, typically in the same repository. That way, you have a clear incentive to update it when doing change in the code, and it's also clearly versioned with the software (1000 thanks to read the doc), you can also treat gap in the documentation as bugs.
However, writing good documentation can be really hard. As the developer, you are, at the same time, the best and worst placed person to document. Best because you know exactly how the software is supposed to work, and worst, because you might miss documenting things that seems obvious to you, but not to the user.
Lastly, as a developer, it can be hard to take a step back, and give a higher level view of the documentation, not diving directly into too much details.
For that, having reviewing from an external eye, and feedback from users can be really helpful.