From the Holy Book of Documentation
“1The DOCUMENTATION is my guide; I shall not wonder.
2It maketh me to understand the necessary concepts;
It leadeth me through the installation process.
3It reassureth me;
It leadeth me on the happy path for my desired objectives.
4Yea, though I work through the advanced configuration menus,
I will fear no failures, for thou art with me
Thy FAQ and thy troubleshooting they comfort me.
5Thou providest examples to me in the context of mine use cases.
Thou explainest my expected outcomes.
My results are perfect.
6Surely good performance and stability will persist throughout the system life
And it will run within the parameters of the DOCUMENTATION forever.”
-Abi Sutherland
Making Light Blog Post
I wish I could claim credit for it, but the author is mentioned and the source is linked.
It does, however, clearly outline the importance of having good documentation in a fun, memorable way. Honestly, how more IT professionals don’t see the radical importance of documentation is beyond me. Maybe it’s just because I’ve started so many jobs without documentation that would have made my life so, so much easier, but I always try to document everything at work. I used to do it with text files that I’d leave everywhere. Or with copious comments in Perl scripts or batch files. Lately, I’ve been using a personal wiki to create my personal “job continuity” documentation to pass along to any replacement. So far, it’s worked well. And, I’ll definitely be adding this to the subtle, hidden parts of the documentation from now on. It’s brilliant!
