The Documentation Nobody Reads
You wrote the docs. Nobody read them. Then something broke, and suddenly your Confluence page had more traffic than the company blog.
This is the lifecycle of documentation: irrelevant, irrelevant, irrelevant, critical, irrelevant again.
Write It Anyway
Documentation is a time capsule. You’re not writing it for the person who exists today. You’re writing it for the person who exists at 3 AM six months from now, desperately searching for "how to restart the payment service."
That person might be you.
What to Document
Why you made a decision (not just what)
How to recover when things go wrong
Where the bodies are buried (metaphorically)
The README
A good README is an act of hospitality. It says: "Welcome. Here’s how things work. You’re going to be fine."
A missing README says: "Figure it out. I did."
Be hospitable.
The ancient coral leaves mineral records. Not because anyone asked — because someday, someone will need to know.
— JP, from the void.