The problem with
software documentation

Software comes from a really specific occidental cultural tradition. Software tends to priviledge masculine, binary, exploitative and extractive practices. Software is shrouded in technical obscurity. Software comes invisible, transparent, neutral. Software models the world in order to control it.

To make software means not only to write code, but also to take a stance regarding this trends. To make software means not only to write code, but also to create a context and community around it.

Documentation is a space that interfaces the different actors around software. Software documentation is a space with potential to renegotiate and reclaim given margins and entry points. It is a chance to overwrite what is normalized, and let different knowledges and voices participate in the discourse around software.

Documenting software is a complex practice. Documenting software is a process of translation. Writing documentation it's more difficult than writing software itself. It requires a lot of time and energy, and it involves many different skills: writing, coding, knowing how to share and at which intensity. It's a collaborative practice that could open to different voices.

As a piece of code would write: I am documented, therefore I am.

Coding is not just production of software, but also production of knowledge. A dialogue between human and more-than-human actors. The guestlist of this conference of the bits is often compiled by chance: the choice of a particular programming language, the coding style, the development environment and ecosystem, the infrastructure that runs the code, and so on, are the result of specific contingencies.

These contingencies are situated in precise contexts, and these contexts are different one from another. Programming is not just sharing code, but sharing context. Programming means to provide a point of view and a perspective to look at the world, before attempting to get some grip onto it with a script. That's the reason why even if source code, even when obfuscated, speaks for itself, it cannot always cast light around its surroundings.

To make place for code turns to be a necessary act of care in the process of sharing knowledge. This does not mean to constrain the usage of some piece of software, or provide opinionated solutions or tutorials, but rather letting others know where does this code come from, and where it would like to go.

Documentation is a way to produce narrations around software. To create a world for a software to inhabit, to give it affordances and stretch what is possible to do or to think with it. Documentation is a space for the political of software. It's a surface that could host ideas in close contact with codes, letting them entangle and shape each other.

The plan

• Focus on software documentation as an interface between code, users, developers, communities, and the world.
• Research how writing software documentation changes depending on the context and actors involved.
• Experiment with software documentation as a generative device to keep thinking through code from different perspectives.
• Explore software documentation as iterative process, as a format that grows and shrinks through versioning and embrances branching to adapt to specific environments.
• Develop tools to facilitate rich software documentation. To assist and stimulate the writing process with prompts and gently reminders that software documentation is a form of care.
• Question the nature of the documentation: what does it take for granted? For what kind of public it is produced, and what kind of public does it produce? How does it normalize the context around the software? What are its politics of access? How does it create entry points and how does it gatekeep?
• Try to infiltrate the industry of software development through documentation. Attempt to expose their public to these questions in subtle ways. Offer entry points and escape routes from the universal solution proposed by big corporates.