Writing Developer Docs

Documentation-driven Development

Whenever you find yourself doing an uncommon development task, consider writing documentation for it as you do it, following "documentation-driven development." For instance, if you need to resolve an unusual Git branching conflict and feel that it may be encountered by others from time to time, then consider writing about it as you do it to save yourself and others some trouble the next time this happens. This will not only be useful in the future, it will also help you think about your development task and clarify what needs to be done as you go. After all, as they say, writing is a way of thinking.

Any documentation is worth writing

Unlike the Qi user docs, developer docs are just for you and to help your fellow developer who already has a lot of context on the project. It's more important to document it at all than to do it in a clean and polished way. For instance, there are already a number of "TODOs" posted in the developer docs today. We don't need to worry about making too many edits or style or anything else. These docs are just here to make our lives easier, and we can always edit and improve and synthesize things as we go.