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do we need documentation in the age of AI? (self.programming)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/programming@programming.dev
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recently I gave AI a task to configure a software and the software didn't have any docs of how it works only the source code. the agent went through all the files and generated a summary of how it works and why it's not working for my particular scenario and suggested edits to my docker-compose.yml file. I couldn't believe it since the bug was very hard to find and it used headless firefox to find why it wasn't working.

made me realize do we still need documentation of how a software work when a AI can easily explain it?

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[–] 5 points 2 days ago*

Yes - it's still useful to have docs to refer to.

But it can also be useful to use the AI to generate that documentation if you're not good at it (which I am not) or aren't disciplined enough to keep them up-to-date (which practically nobody is).

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