As a wise person once said:
Reading documentation is fucking tedious. Writing documentation is more fucking tedious.
--A Wise Person
And we get it. There are probably many things you want to be doing rather than reading this. That makes sense. In fact, I myself have barely read through the document - and I wrote this shit. However, at 2381 Robotics, we have lots and lots of documentation because it aligns with three of our guiding principles.
-
Robotics is fucking expensive. With respect to both your time and money, this shit ain't cheap - you might want to get your money's worth in return. Documentation helps in two ways -
-
Maximize your time when you have the robot -> If you are up to date with what is going on within the team and what other people are working on, you will spend less time trying to figure out the fuck is going on and more time getting stuff done.
-
Contribute even without the robot on hand -> Alot of the time, it won't be possible or convenient for you to be in the same location as the actual robot. Using this time to clean up the style of the code base or adding to the design document is a great way to further your own understanding.
-
-
At 2381 Robotics, our primary goal is to make sure
everyone is safe and is having funto win. Winning is fun, but to do that, our code - as well as our overall design - needs to not be shit.
- Whenever you are writing anything, keep in mind that some poor miserable soul has to actually read it. Additionally, recognize that that poor miserable soul might know where you live, and not be so happy if you somehow wrote into existence a fucking spaghetti monster. Finally, comprehend that by spending 5 more minutes to add a few comments and update the API, it may save someone else on your team the amount of work equivalent decrypting the enigma machine.
