Documentation and Style

Contrary to popular belief, software design is not primarily about code, or even algorithms and data structures. It's about meeting people's needs. Software that's incomprehensible is worse than useless, it's actively obstructive. Your software must, therefore, be documented both at the user level (user manuals) and internally (code documentation). Even when you're writing code that (you think!) only you will ever use, you should still write good documentation and comments. It's amazing how strange your code will seem to you after you set it down for 6 months.

I expect you to use correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling in all documentation. For code-level documentation, often phrases and sentence fragments are appropriate, but there's no excuse for misspellings or incorrect usage within your comments. For user-level documentation, complete, grammatically correct sentences and correctly formed paragraphs are essential.

You will be graded, in part, on usage, spelling, grammar, etc., as well as on thoroughness and comprehensibility of your documentation. Being a computer hacker does not excuse you from natural language skills!