Over-Documenting

Documentation has always been a problem in engineering.

We hate writing it. We think it’s a waste of time. Less is more.

I started my career before we had computers with word processors on our desk. We wrote documents by hand, on paper, handed it to the admin. She’d type it, make the figures, and make it publishable. That’s two people, for several hours, but all the engineer had to deal was the content itself. The admin handled the look and feel.

Then we got our own computers with word processors. That eliminated the 2nd person, but it put us in charge of publishing. The figures, the typos, the format. Now we had to create the content and the look and feel.

Word processors and templates got incrementally better over the years, but that workflow has largely remained the same since the mid-90s.

The result was sparse documentation at best.

Now we have AI.

AI unlocks all of the documentation. Literally all of it.

“Create the design document for…”
“Create the API spec for…”
“Create the user document for…”
“Create an analysis of the differences between…”

Now we’re awash in documentation.

You want documentation? You got it.

More than you could ever hope for.