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Floor Drees
October 18, 2014
Programming
460
3
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(kick-ass) Readme Driven Development
as presented at DevFest Vienna 2014. Accompanying blog post will follow.
Floor Drees
October 18, 2014
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Transcript
kick-ass Documentation Driven Development @floordrees
kick-ass Documentation Driven Development although really we will be talking
about RDD @floordrees
readme documentation
None
None
None
back to the topic
We often only start writing documentation for our apps and
app functionality after we have developed them.
a vital part in the decision making process
coding ALL the rubies
nobody puts baby in a corner
Readme or Documentation Driven Development brings back the design-driven way
of thinking
what about BDD as Behaviour or Business Driven Development?
tl;dr
detecting complexity early on
pro tip:! write your issues like documentation
Until you've written about your software, you have no idea
what you’re doing.
A perfect implementation of the wrong specification is worthless. A
beautifully crafted library with no documentation is also damn near worthless. Tom Preston Werner
benefits of RDD
think through the project without the overhead of having to
change code every time you change your mind
you'll have a very nice piece of reference for what
will become your documentation
pro tip:! keep your Readme open at all times
Retroactively writing a Readme is an absolute drag.
your co-workers can confidently ! start work on other projects
that will interface with your code
free bonus feature:! no teams just sitting there, being pretty
it's a lot simpler to have a discussion based on
something written down
It has the ability to give a high level view
of your code with the goal to gather insight and recommendations from your consumers early and throughout the design process.
it’s markdown! you know markdown! you can do markdown
Github showcases the Readme on the main project page
it’s totally Open Source compatible
pro tip:! Looking to add RDD / DDD to your
existing project? It can be as simple as just adding a step to your BDD or TDD
pro tip:! make writing or updating documentation ! a required
first step of your ! development process
pro tip:! include documentation changes as part of your code
reviews
pitfalls of RDD
just an over-generalization of a good idea!
have the Readme present what you are aiming for, rather
than what the code actually does
a Readme does not substitute ! proper documentation
what makes a good Readme?
airbnb for cats
formatting is key
rrrrr code samples
community and licensing details
air your dirty laundry in public
OMG badges
Readmore: http://tom.preston-werner.com/2010/08/23/readme-driven-development.html http://collectiveidea.com/blog/archives/2014/04/21/on-documentation- driven-development/!
thank you @floordrees