thesis/readme.md

TODO: a file where to keep references

Worlding and Software

How do you chose a particular programming language, a coding style, a development environment and ecosystem, an infrastructure where to run the code, and so on?

These are not just technical choices, but rather coding contingencies.

These contingencies are situated in precise economical, cultural, creative, political, and technical contexts. Programming then is not just sharing code, but sharing context. It's providing a perspective to look at the world before attempting to get some grip onto it with a script.

How to offer a point of view through the lens of software?
Who get to participate in this process of making meaning?
How to create a discourse for the code to inhabit?
How to stretch the affordances of code, besides, technicality, marketing, and advertisement?

Enter documentation

Could software documentation:

0. be a mean to explore these contingencies?
1. be an ideal surface to build worlds?
2. be an interface between different knowledges?
3. be a device to trigger different kind of economy around situated software?

How can situated practices inform the process of documenting software? And how can situated software inform the process of technical writing?

Table of Contents (draft)

The thesis is composed of different texts: some provide context and critical background to situate the research, while others consist in experiments of actual documentation written for software developed within our course. Every piece of documentation will try to reflect on different angles.

The critical and theoretical research will be weaved around the actual documentations, in order to create a discourse and annotate the development of this practice.

0. Coding Contingencies
   Situate software as cultural object and proposes documentation as a surface to explore it.

   • Context around software, software studies

   • Define software documentation

     • reference, how-to, guide, tutorial
     • here we are not focusing on one specific format, bur rather to a form of care (for users, for software, for context)

   • Introduce issues around software and documentation [probably articulated better later on]

   • Propose documentation as a way to address these issues [probably articulated better later on]

   Question: mention the context of situated software here ??

1. Participation
   Who gets to write, and who is forced to do it? How does development and technical writing interact? Is the technical writer a subaltern position in the industry of software development? What about users?

   • Historical overview of how software documentation changed (from printed technical manual to wiki and discord server)
     • Printed manuals
     • Manpages
     • Websites
     • Wikis
     • Online communities
   • Reflection on actors involved and hierarchy (from developers to end-users, gendered work, subaltern work, post-meritocratic manifesto)

2. Destination
   Who can read documentation? Who can access? Where is the documentation hosted? How does it relate with a bigger context, if any?

3. Tone and style
   How to make a documentation more accessible? How to create multiple entry points in a complex topic? How to address different kind of users, and not just a generic one? How to orientate software in the world?

4. Susteinability
   How to face the lack of resources when approaching technical writing? Strategies to share workloads and collaboration. Strategies to take care of shared piece of software.