Research and reflections on software engineering and software development.
Software development isn’t just about the code we write. It also spans the many situations, experiences, and new knowledge we encounter when we write code.
Traditional documentation requires a process where a few people write for many potential users (especially in the case of API documentation). The resulting documentation, more often than not just doesn’t cut it — There aren’t enough examples, details, or explanations.
Continuing my series of posts on cognitive neuroscience of memory. In this post, I first give an overview of attentive memory, some examples of attentive memory failures, and then end with some thoughts on how we might want to support attentive memory in our design of interfaces and tools.
Why are we still using ideas about memory from the 60’s to build programming tools?
Traditional documentation requires a process where a few people write for many potential users (especially in the case of API documentation). The resulting documentation, more often than not just doesn’t cut it — There aren’t enough examples, details, or explanations.