> On 14 Feb 2015, at 1:42 am, Dennis E. Hamilton <[email protected]> > wrote: > > One important lesson in my career is to not assume what is easy and > hard for others, especially when it mainly exists as a mental > edifice in the mind of the supposer.
This is very true. In fact those who are intimately familiar with a given codebase are generally the people least able to make such a judgement. It’s always difficult for someone who knows an entire codebase to figure out how to document and arrange tasks to be done, due to being “too close”, so to speak, to the code. I’ve gone through the exact same problem in my current day job - in which I’ve come onto a project written by a single person, with very little documentation. Over a period of several months, working closely with the original developer, I’ve come to gain a solid understanding of most (but not all) of the codebase. Questions, exploration, trying things out, getting stuck, and more questions is what I found to be the only effective way. As Jan mentioned, documentation can only go far, and there’s a learning process involved. Tell me what information you need, and I’ll give it to you. I’m here to help. — Dr Peter M. Kelly [email protected] PGP key: http://www.kellypmk.net/pgp-key <http://www.kellypmk.net/pgp-key> (fingerprint 5435 6718 59F0 DD1F BFA0 5E46 2523 BAA1 44AE 2966)
