Do you share my belief that documentation tends to lag in most projects?
Absolutely.
I suspect that the number of people interested in writing software documentation is fairly small: they have to have enough knowledge of software engineering to be able to understand what they are writing about, and they have to be good writers. Anyone could learn software development, but not everyone does. And anyone could learn how to write well, but not everyone does. So the set of people who learn both is even smaller.
On commercial software engineering projects, my experience is that documentation of any sort is made as much of an afterthought as possible, if even that. Unless there's some business case (i.e., obvious money) that comes from spending time on documentation, then it doesn't make it very high on the priority list. Which is unfortunate, because as a software developer, I've wasted a lot of time figuring things out that should have been documented. So money can be saved later on, even if no money is "earned" up front.
For free / open source projects, the story may be different. There's not necessarily paid engineering staff involved, so if documentation doesn't get written, I can only presume that the developers either didn't want to, didn't know they should, or felt incapable of writing it. I find it hard to imagine taking a principled stand against having good documentation.
BUT... in my anecdotal experience, I've encountered volunteer open source software developers who in fact did seem resistant to accepting offers of volunteer help with documentation. So I'm not really sure what's up with that.
Absolutely.
I suspect that the number of people interested in writing software documentation is fairly small: they have to have enough knowledge of software engineering to be able to understand what they are writing about, and they have to be good writers. Anyone could learn software development, but not everyone does. And anyone could learn how to write well, but not everyone does. So the set of people who learn both is even smaller.
On commercial software engineering projects, my experience is that documentation of any sort is made as much of an afterthought as possible, if even that. Unless there's some business case (i.e., obvious money) that comes from spending time on documentation, then it doesn't make it very high on the priority list. Which is unfortunate, because as a software developer, I've wasted a lot of time figuring things out that should have been documented. So money can be saved later on, even if no money is "earned" up front.
For free / open source projects, the story may be different. There's not necessarily paid engineering staff involved, so if documentation doesn't get written, I can only presume that the developers either didn't want to, didn't know they should, or felt incapable of writing it. I find it hard to imagine taking a principled stand against having good documentation.
BUT... in my anecdotal experience, I've encountered volunteer open source software developers who in fact did seem resistant to accepting offers of volunteer help with documentation. So I'm not really sure what's up with that.