[Lazarus] Lazarus Digest, Vol 99, Issue 32

[Lukasz Sokol]

On 18/04/16 11:53, Michael Schnell wrote:
> On 04/18/2016 12:40 PM, Ondrej Pokorny wrote:
>> 
>> No, the equation includes everything along with everybody's
>> interests.
>> 
>> Example: You spend X hours to write documentation for A that saves
>> Y hours to Z users that otherwise had to study the code. Then you
>> can compare X to Y*Z.
> 
> That was my initial proposal leading to "extremely hard to define",
> as (due to no intended and hence measurable revenue) the developers
> don't have any idea about the count of users and the effort they need
> to get their work done.
> 
> As an extreme you would say: no documentation at all is best, as that
> means no hours to create it and there supposedly will be at least a
> single user who is able to make some small benefit from the project
> and hence the positive ratio is infinite .
> 

This only is right, if the user who decides to invest in writing documentation, 
only writes it, and then uses it once, and then doesn't care any more.

Which I'd say, is /hardly ever/ the case ?

Same with the readers of the docs, 
can you remember EVERY content of EVERY doc you ever read, every time you wish to use 
the knowledge contained therein ? 

You have a chance of remembering by heart what you read, at least '7' times, if you wrote it
yourself 

(7 is just arbitrary number here; although not far from reality of creating 'written works',
that I read of having at least 8 revisions before considered stable & good style ), 

while consumers of the docs need to read them more times to remember.

-L.

> -Michael
>