NYCPHP Meetup

[Elliotte Harold]

John Campbell wrote:

> Even documentation doesn't add much time with javadoc and an IDE like
> Zend.  It fills in most of the stuff for you and adds it to the code
> completion hints automatically so you get the benefit of the
> documentation immediately.  Once you type /**[enter], and have
> experienced the magic, you will never go back.

There's documentation and there's documentation/ JavaDoc (or PHP 
equivalent) is useful bbut it's no substitute for solid design 
documentation and tuorials (or vice versa) and these take time.

Unit tests work and save time in part because they let programmers focus 
on what programmers like to do: write code. With occasional exceptions, 
most programmers don't like to write documentation and they aren't very 
good at it when they try.

It's still important to have good documentation, but it does take some 
extra time. Unlike unit testing, I don't believe writing documentation 
saves you time up front, though it may pay back that time later.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo at metalab.unc.edu
Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596527500/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA/