Software Documentation

While working on any software project, while talking with people the first question that most people ask is where is the documentation, or manual. Most of the people expect good documents of the software to be there, so that they can spoon feed. However while working on UNIX, which follows the philosphy of "code is the documentation", such a question really sounds stupid sometimes. Particularly in this age of google. When my team members asks me this question, it peeves me sometimes. There is a good reason for that. Most people hate to document their work, but at the same time expect documents to be ready for them. They fail to realize that they are part of the problem. However common sense is not so common :-)

The need for documentation => But good documentation is a vital component of software engineering. I make it a habit to document much of the stuff I do, that helps me, when I want to look at those topics again, and even while preparing my status reports. I heard this is a part of personal software engineering :-)

Today's Scenario => Apart from the manual's, in todays world, the online forums/mailing lists are a big boon, and they act as good pieces of documentations. Many queries, which a book simply cannot take care of are easily answered on a mailing list. In fact most of the time, the queries are already asked and answered by some expert on some forum or mailing list.