WTFM: Write the Freaking Manual

theodp writes "Blogger Floopsy complains that he would love to RTFM, but can't do so if no one will WTFM. 'You spend hours, days, months, perhaps years refining your masterpiece,' Floopsy laments to creators of otherwise excellent programming language, framework, and projects. 'It is an expression of your life's work, heart and soul. Why, then, would you shortchange yourself by providing poor or no documentation for the rest of us?' One problem with new program languages, a wise CS instructor of mine noted in the early look-Ma-no-documentation days of C++, is that their creators are not typically professional writers and shy away from the effort it takes to produce even less-than-satisfactory manuals. But without these early efforts, he explained, the language or technology may never gain enough traction for the Big Dogs like O'Reilly to come in and write the professional-caliber books that are necessary for truly widespread adoption. So, how important is quality documentation to you as a creator or potential user of new technologies? And how useful do you find the documentation that tech giants like Google (Go), Twitter (Bootstrap), Facebook (iOS 6 Facebook Integration), Microsoft (Windows Store apps), and Apple (Create Apps for IOS 6) produce to promote their nascent technologies? Is it useful on its own, or do you have to turn to other 'store-bought' documentation to really understand how to get things done?"

Documentation?

[fahrbot-bot]

Real programmers don't document. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand. :-)
You youngsters always want things "explained" - geesh.

Seriously, get your hands dirty and work for it.

Re:Documentation can make a standrd

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was in elementary I borrowed the first edition of K&R from dad's colleague. It's still sitting on my shelf.

It's your dad's colleague here, and I'm still waiting for you to return my damn book!. Kids these days, no respect.

Re:meh... real_Men read_debugger() and write_hex()

[rubycodez]

any "developer" who uses more than a text editor, command line build tool such as make, and a compiler or interpreter, is a fucking pussy.

Re:In addition...

[orgelspieler]

Depends on the professor. I was taught that prose should be like a miniskirt: long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to be interesting.