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.
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.
Gathering materials in [Care for code](care_for_code.md)! 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