The following two statements are usually both true: There's not enough documentation. There's too much documentation.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Both statements—there isn’t enough documentation and there’s too much—are usually true.
- In plain terms
- Documentation can be simultaneously lacking and overwhelming.
- What can you take from it?
- Balance depth and brevity in docs.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- How do you decide what to document?
- What makes documentation useful?
Another view
Finding the sweet spot is context‑dependent.
More from Larry Wall
The computer should be doing the hard work. That's what it's paid to do, after all.
Permalink to quote #98 Of course, this being Perl, we could always take both approaches. :-)
Permalink to quote #100 Real theology is always rather shocking to people who already think they know what they think. I'm still shocked myself. :-)
Permalink to quote #97
Related quotes
I spent this time polishing up the software/hardware documentation, renaming registers to be more meaningful. This was actually time well spent in my life.
Jay MinerJay Miner quote #3 I don't know if it's what you want, but it's what you get. :-)
Larry WallLarry Wall quote #5 It's documented in The Book, somewhere...
Larry WallLarry Wall quote #14