Comments on: Usability-driven development

By: cakebaker

cakebaker — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 06:53:09 +0000

@Leif: I didn’t include documentation because documentation is decoupled from the code. If I work with a component in my IDE, I have to leave the IDE to read the documentation. So documentation exists on its own.

Personally I think a good user interface comes without any help menu and no tooltips. And so an undocumented API would be the ideal API we should aspire. I know, it sounds a bit illogical and like an idea of a lazy guy who doesn’t want to document an API, but I think writing such an undocumented API requires more work if your goal is a good usability of the API.

I agree with you that documentation is important, especially to provide the “big picture”, or in the form of tutorials.

By: Leif

Leif — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 17:12:50 +0000

Since you open your post with a reference to the “no documentation” post, I cannot keep my mouth shut. You claim “[...] you can look at the public attributes and methods plus the comments as the user interface of a code component. [...]” I couldn’t agree more. But why do you exclude documentation when you include comments? Proper documentation is as good a part of good software as helpful comments are. An undocumented API is a user interface without any help menu and no tooltips. Documentation is a critical component of any software, be it for users or for programmers.

By: Geoff Ford

Geoff Ford — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 23:58:21 +0000

I agree that a good, consistent public interface is essential for a code component to be easily adopted.

I also think that bundled unit tests are great. If I decide to hack something I like to know that it hasn’t broken anything.

By: othman ouahbi

othman ouahbi — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 14:35:52 +0000

Heh, I’ve come to the same conclusion(s). the interface of code is very important, and not just for others, for yourself as well.

By: mito

mito — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 19:41:59 +0000

i definitely agree with u,
code should be written for its purpose, if it is component its purpose is easy use for users (programmers)