Documentation sessions

Documentation sessions to take care of code

What could it be

Periodical sessions where to document code. Once a week, a couple of hours, on a regular basis.

Soft facilitation: - not meant to be frontal moments, but more a shared space - small zines to share things about documentation practices (readings, frameworks, prompts) - p2p feedback and help - coffee snacks music - stickers with animals that says document your code (wip) - share progress like brief debrief ?

For who?

For people that tinker with code. Both novice and navigated ones. For documenting small ongoing prototypes or more structured projects. For xpub2, xpub1, lens based, even bachelor students? Something open.

How to do

• Decide when and where and communicate it
• Could be useful to have some examples
• Nice also to have some prompts

Where ? ? ?

• March 23rd at varia
• Could ask v2 if it's somethig they are interested in
• School

Some visual test

Not sure but made a couple of flyers let's see

Flyer text triouts

Document code like birds of paradise do

2 hours of headspace to write some nice documentation for a more accessible programming practice

Ok this is really not necessary right now but what about:

A small system to generate flyers

• Header
• Bird
• Date - Place - Info
• Adjective

Document code like
<birds name> do
<picture of bird>
<date><place><info>

2 hours of headpsace
to write some nice
DOCUMENTATION
for a more <adj>
programming practice

And with wobbly shapes for the flyer ... but this will be for another time

Let's write some text to invitate people!!

Let's write some code documentation! For your new coding project, for the cryptic library you downloaded recently, for a script that you want to share with others!

Too many pieces of code are left alone out there: without an entry point, forgotten, while outside is raining. Wouldn't it be nice to take care of them?

Enter the documentation sessions. Two hours where to sit with source code and write something about it. From simple instructions to in-depth explanations, or maybe some drawings to illustrate the overall process. You name it.

Writing documentation is difficult! But let's face this together: prompts and suggestions will be offered for inspiration, and coffee and snacks for restoration. If you want there will be space to share your work and exchange feedback, if not no prob: just enjoy the cozy music and write some docs.

Practical info: Two hours on __, starting at ____! For people that thinkers with code, no matter the experience. Processing, P5.js, TouchDesigner, Javascript, Python, doesn't really matter! All code looks better when is documented! Come alone or with friends, bring your laptop and something to document.

First session 15/03/2022

The first session took place at WdKA, 4th floor. Not super crowded, but still useful to prepare some contents and understand what could be useful.

Printed some materials:

Stickers - Trolley meme - Wolf, goat and lattuce meme - Diataxis scheme

Readings - ReadMe Driven Development - Tom Preston Werner - Suggestions for a good README

Notes for next session

• Add more context! That could be: something from the thesis introduction
  • where is this project coming from
  • why are you doing it
  • why do you think is important
• Could elaborate more where the documentation is in relation to the code
  • where is the documentation?
  • a (loose) connection between code and documentation
  • not everyone use git for example
• Do not take for granted what a readme is! Introduce it!
  • Some historical overview
  • Origin of "Readme" - Stack Exchange
  • The Jargon File
  • Offer it just as an option, mention other options
  • Critical read of ReadMe Driven Dev

Gathering materials in Care for code! It came out as a small web-to-print zine!

Report from session2

Session two at Varia. It was nice.

There were six people including me. Some friends, some acquaintances, and a stranger. It was a balanced mix. In the end we didn't really documented anything, but used the materials and prompts to discuss and think about documentation from different perspectives. We were too invested in the topic to just work on our own.

There were a lot of interesting prompts. Some were coming from the printed materials: the list of sections from makeareadme.com triggered a lot of discussions around the standardization of readme files due to platformism, about what was missing from there, about which kind of world was referring to

Scattered thoughts: - next session could be longer: discussions were soo interesting and rich that in the end there was no time for writing docs - next session could be thematic: based on one activity such as the seductive readme file, or the readme and easy readme, or image based documentation, etc - materials are good starting point, but if you bring something you could also activate it, not just leave it there. meaning: why did you bring a particular thing?

notes for next time

practical: - offer a structure at the beginning: context, how activities are organized, etc. - take pictures - take notes or ask if it's ok to record

documentation archive ???

Hosting the session was refreshing! It helped me think about a concrete outcome (snapshot?) for the graduation project. At some point i found myself thinkingabout a visual archive for documentations with a loose and expressive tagging system.

These tags could be informed by the various activties of the workshops, and be a way to navigate through and link together different docs. Not only from technical aspects but also formal, content wise, etc