The Eight Rules of Good Documentation

If useful documentation is so important to the success of projects and developer well-being, why don’t all projects have it? The answer, I believe, is that like good code, good documentation is difficult and time consuming to write.

In my eyes, there are eight rules that we can follow to produce good documentation:

1. Write documentation that is inviting and clear
2. Write documentation that is comprehensive, detailing all aspects of the project
3. Write documentation that is skimmable
4. Write documentation that offers examples of how to use the software
5. Write documentation that has repetition, when useful
6. Write documentation that is up-to-date
7. Write documentation that is easy to contribute to
8. Write documentation that is easy to find

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