The Grand Unified Theory of Documentation (AKA: Your project needs all 4 types or you have bad documentation)
The Grand Unified Theory of Documentation (AKA: Your project needs all 4 types or you have bad documentation)
Find the software documentation system for Divio. Includes comprehensive tutorials, how-to guides, technical reference and explanation. Learn more here.
The mistake most devs make when trying to document their project is that they only make one (maybe two) types of documentation based on a readme template and/or what their mental model of a newcomer needs.
Devs need to be actively taught that:
- Good documentation isn't one thing, it's four. To have good documentation, you need all four distinct types of documentation.
- What the four types of documentation are (this is discussed in the link)
If you don't have all four types of documentation, you have bad documentation.
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I feel like the original source for this is diataxis.fr.
Yeah it looks like it, I wonder if the authors there had some sort of professional relationship with my link's host
Hey, I just found that it is common to think that divio plagiarized from diataxis. It is not. A person at divio came up with this and asked permission to spin it off into its own website.
I just learned this from footnote at this article: https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/problems-with-the-4doc-model/#fn:diataxis