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# Documentation
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## What is documentation?
- Provides context for your work
- Explains what this is and how to use it
- Explains what has been done and why
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## Why document software?
Make your software reusable:
- A user should be able to run your software in the same way as you do now
- A user should be able to install your software
- A contributor should be able to add to, improve, or fix code
note:
"a contributor" includes future you. Don't touch your code for a year or two and you will not immediately remember the decisions that you made in the past.
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## Documentation types
Documentation can have different purposes:
- **User documentation**
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- What does the software do? How can it be used?
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- **Developer documentation**
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- How can your software be modified or extended? Why were certain development choices made.
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- **Deployment documentation**
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- How to install the software? What hardware and other software is needed?
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## Documentation formats
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- README: simple text file, first thing that users/collaborators see
- In-code: intended for developers (comments, docstrings, ...)
- Websites, Wikis
- Tutorials
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## A good README file
+ README file is first thing a user/collaborator sees
+ What should be included in README files?
<ul>
<li contenteditable="true">...</li>
<li contenteditable="true">...</li>
<li contenteditable="true">...</li>
<li contenteditable="true">...</li>
<li contenteditable="true">...</li>
<li contenteditable="true">...</li>
<li contenteditable="true">...</li>
</ul>
Note:
+ A descriptive project title
+ Motivation (why the project exists) and basics
+ Installation / How to setup
+ Copy-pasteable quick start code example
+ Usage reference (if not elsewhere)
+ Recommended citation if someone uses it
+ Other related tools ("see also")
+ Contact information for the developer(s)
+ License information
+ Contributing guidelines
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## In-code documentation?
- Code comments:
- Provide context for (complex parts) of the code
- Explains certain coding decisions
- Can often be replaced by better programming
- Docstrings:
- Special comments that describe (use of) functions/classes/etc.
- Can be called by users/websites
- Follow a standardized syntax (per programming language)
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## Exercise: In-line comments
**Comment A**
<pre data-id="code-animation"><code style="overflow: hidden;" data-trim class="python">
# Now we check if temperature is larger than -50:
if temperature > -50:
print('do something')
</code></pre>
**Comment B**
<pre data-id="code-animation"><code style="overflow: hidden;" data-trim class="python">
# We regard temperatures below -50 degrees as measurement errors
if temperature > -50:
print('do something')
</code></pre>
- How are these different? Which one do you prefer?
- Can you think of a way to avoid using comments altogether?
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## User/API documentation
+ What if a README file is not enough?
+ Use tools to create API documentation from existing docstrings
note:
tools include
+ **Sphinx** / **mkdocs** (documentation generator)
- creates nicely-formatted HTML pages out of .md or .rst files
- programming language independent
+ **Github pages** (deploy your documentation)
- set up inside your GitHub repository
- automatically deploys documentation generated above
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## Tutorials
+ Example code that allows users to run specific test cases
+ Jupyter notebooks are often used for this purpose
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## Take-home message
- Documentation is a vital part of a project.
- It should be kept and created alongside the corresponding code.
- Depending on the purpose/scope documentation needs to meet different criteria.
- Documentation can take many shapes.
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