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Self explaining code is not enough, I need to know why things happen in the way how it's happen.
I was working on a big project when I had to edit some small thing in one subproject, which was just a few lines of code based on specs, but had to ask a lot of people because the documentation in code was almost 0 and nothing whas explained why it does that what it does.
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Better the address, so you can go there and kick him in the...   
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I should defeat Cerberus to enter Hades while still alive though
GCS/GE d--(d) s-/+ a C+++ U+++ P-- L+@ E-- W+++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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Not necessarily [^] 
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I was taught to code under the assumption that the person who would maintain it is a psychopath who knows where you live ....
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Would be nice ... 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Tell me what's the goal, which modules are responsible for what, what's the math involved in the project and why some decisions have been taken (e.g. clamping of values, filtering or no filtering, timings...).
GCS/GE d--(d) s-/+ a C+++ U+++ P-- L+@ E-- W+++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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Nothing else will be of any practical help. A good (emphasis on good) project manager can be the key to code surviving beyond the original coder.
Money makes the world go round ... but documentation moves the money.
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And the problem is rarely ever reading the code.
Even when I find comments they're usually unclear and/or outdated.
I really don't care for inline comments, never have.
The problem is getting it to run locally and then releasing it to production.
I had to get a specific version of Node.js and npm, then I had to run some scripts.
Some thing never got to work because some style file was never in npm's build output.
I had to get passwords by finding config files in an Azure environment.
For release I hope for a well working pipeline, but unfortunately it wasn't working.
The programmer used a "windows-latest" machine and Microsoft had just changed "latest" from VS2019 to VS2022, which apparently was a problem for npm (I know, what the ![Elephant | [mastadon]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/elephant.gif) !?  )
For some other task I had to run some specific scripts that were on the original programmer's computer (or in his head, maybe).
Another project I'm working on is doing everything in the database and using some background no-code solution to move everything around.
It's a nightmare and you can only know what being done with data by knowing it.
There's a tiny ASP.NET WebForms shell, but then there's a SQL Database with 100's (1000's?) of stored procedures, views, functions...
In both cases I could really do with some documentation.
How do I get this running? What's the overall setup? Where can I find configurations? What manual steps should I take? How do I deploy to various environments?
Just a neat Word document to get me started would do.
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I so agree. It shouldn't be so difficult just to get things running locally.
Some of my work has been to do critical bug fixes for production apps - things that need to be fixed ASAP. And it gets frustrating to have to spend 1-2 days just to get things working in a dev environment, then find it only takes an hour or so to recreate the bug and fix it. Meanwhile management is breathing down your neck, wanting to know when it will be done.
What gets to be especially frustrating is when management says "let's get XXXX (original developer) to fix this", even though he was a) the person who created this elephanting mess in the first place, and b) was responsible for the bug that I now need to fix...
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I recently had to hand over some code. It's not an easy task to transfer knowledge, a lot of things might be obvious to you, but not to someone else. At least there are specs, comments, technical docs for the new devs explaining how to build and publish and we did a walkthrough. Having them set up their dev environment and get it up and running and deploying a new version helped to improve the documentation. Now they just need to get familiar with the projects and codebase.
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