#documentation

The fun thing of working on a #documentation project like @phpdoc@phpc.social? you can create extensions to document your own work using @phpdoc@phpc.social. My newest extension? An extension to document the directives supported by @phpdoc@phpc.social. https://github.com/phpDocumentor/phpDocumentor/pull/4191/changes This is a level of inception I never hit before.

The @roost@hachyderm.io Coop docs are looking preeeeeetty nice now, huh? 👀 https://roostorg.github.io/coop/latest/ #OpenSource #TrustAndSafety #documentation #ROOST

@vnikolov@ieji.de @pascal_costanza@functional.cafe @screwlisp@gamerplus.org @ramin_hal9001@fe.disroot.org @SDF@mastodon.sdf.org The history archive I'm building on github is willing to hold files that are not well-stored elsewhere but I don't want to weigh it down with things that are already safely stored. But safely stored is blurrier than I would have expected because sometimes they're stored in ways that are poorly indexed. The Internet Archive and MIT's DSpace are examples of things not well-indexed, but I suspect most archival storage is really not intelligible. I have had an LLM helping me navigate painful indexes, but it's slow-going sometimes. For example, I have some documents that it turned out were already in the Internet Archive, just badly positioned. Like there is a thing called the Lagout Museum that was on the web for a while and held a lot of interesting Symbolics documents. They are still there in the Internet Archive, but you don't look under Symbolics, you have to find them under this museum. It's not an easy thing. I only ran into it because there was a live-web pointer to a 404 of the Lagout Museum live on the web, and I traced into whether the IA had a archival copy, which it did. But if you go to https://web.archive.org/web/20251010122927/https://doc.lagout.org/science/0_Computer%20Science/0_Computer%20History/old-hardware/symbolics/ you can see a lot of Symbolics documents that are hard to find elsewhere. People should bookmark this and link it from more prominent sites. Each page, incidentally, asks you to donate, but the museum site is gone. I guess not enough people donated. There is a sad irony in the donate button popping up in the archive. But, relevant to this thread, this file has information and a very small code sample for defwhopper. It also mentions defwhopper-subst, which it says is really just syntactic sugar for a defwrapper. The relevant file is software/genera_8/Symbolics_Common_Lisp_Programming_Constructs.pdf which you can find in the Internet Archive at https://web.archive.org/web/20191013221848/https://doc.lagout.org/science/0_Computer%20Science/0_Computer%20History/old-hardware/symbolics/software/genera_8/Symbolics_Common_Lisp_Programming_Constructs.pdf Last time this Lagout Museumcame up for discussion, I think @brewsterkahle@mastodon.archive.org had asked @internetarchive@mastodon.archive.org to get them better placement, but I don't know if they did. The relevant task, in my opinion, is just to make a symbolic link, or whatever the Internet Archive equivalent of same is, so that there's a Symbolics documentation area that's more easily findable and just points to https://web.archive.org/web/20251010122927/https://doc.lagout.org/science/0_Computer%20Science/0_Computer%20History/old-hardware/symbolics/ which is much harder to find. In general, it would be nice if someone had a curated map of old manuals that was by device type, including links so that if some devices shared documentation, you could find the doc under any applicable. It's probably work to do that, but maybe if it was set up right, volunteers would help organize, as happens at Wikipedia either by having a set of trusted curators (perhaps partitioned by area of expertise) or some way for the public to vote on suggested changes. But right now it's just an unintelligible sea of undifferentiated duplicates in some of the areas, and I find that a real impediment to knowing whether documents I possess are already properly archived. #KentsHistoryProject #InternetArchive #Symbolics #SymbolicsDocumentation #Documentation #RetroComputing

Documentation is what you write for the future stranger who has the password, SSH access, and the confidence of someone who definitely knows what they are doing. A note about what changed, where the backup lives, or how to undo it can turn a late-night incident from archaeology into a boring task. Boring is the feature. #sysadmin #documentation #homelab

Someone “cleaned up” the workaround. The code looked simpler. Then the production bug came back. That strange delay was not just ugly code. It carried knowledge: The upstream API could replay the same order unless the request was handled carefully. But the reason existed only in someone’s head. Keep the Why is an agent skill that captures this kind of rationale as a natural by-product of development and stores it as versioned Markdown inside the project. So before the next developer or agent removes the workaround, they can see: • why it exists • what was already tried • what could break • what must change before it can safely be removed Legacy does not begin when code gets old. It begins when the reason disappears. Free and open source: https://keepthewhy.com/ What “ugly” workaround in your codebase is actually carrying important knowledge? #OpenSource #AIEngineering #DeveloperTools #SoftwareEngineering #CodingAgents #ContextEngineering #TechnicalDebt #Documentation

Keep the Why started with a simple idea: AI-assisted development already produces valuable reasoning — but most of it disappears when the conversation ends. It has since evolved far beyond rationale capture. The new article explains how Keep the Why became repository-native project memory for humans and AI agents: • continuous capture during development • retrospective recovery for existing codebases • knowledge-transfer interviews • maintenance of stale context • explicit evidence and status labels • abandoned changes without a diff • prompt-injection protection through a clear trust boundary The most important principle: Project knowledge may influence reasoning. It must never grant authority to an agent. And it still needs no database, daemon, dashboard, or external service. Just Markdown, Git, humans, and agents working with the same project knowledge. Read the article: https://blog.technopathy.club/keep-the-why-project-memory-for-humans-and-ai-agents #AI #AIAgents #SoftwareEngineering #OpenSource #DevSecOps #Documentation

Exciting news for PHP documentation contributors: "php/docbook-cs" now has an auto-fixer! 🎉

docbook-cs --fix

All credit goes to Nick, who did all the work to make this happen. 🙌

This should make life easier for maintainers and lower the barrier for newcomers: fewer style nitpicks, faster reviews, and more focus on improving the docs.

Repo: http://github.com/php/docbook-cs

#PHP #PHPDocs #Documentation #Opensource

🆕 Architecture decision records The decision is the cheap part; the reasoning behind it is what evaporates. Architecture decision records are a small, deliberate defence against that loss. Read it → https://rj-cooper.co.uk/posts/architecture-decision-records/ #Architecture #Decisionmaking #Documentation

Any recommendations for generating annotated hex dumps for #documentation, optimally (but not necessarily) something like @angealbertini@bird.makeup's format dissections: https://github.com/corkami/formats/blob/master/image/PNGRGB_dissected.png #ReverseEngineering

My Linux User Group had an interesting discussion about whether user manuals need to be more user-friendly. One of the points raised was that it isn't needed because AI can simplify anything written down. On the other side were those saying that software engineering gets better if you are forced to write documentation. #AI #documentation

RE: https://c3d2.social/@katzenmann/116827372997387394

WOOOO! This is actually a new feature in #git 2.55!

There's now the git history fixup command which does exactly what this alias does.

https://git-scm.com/docs/git-history#Documentation/git-history.txt-fixupcommit

Also look at git history reword and git history split

Twenty years of #Markdown hindsight, in one markup language: #Carve. What a "post-Markdown" standard could look like: strictly specified, secure by design, lightweight source for complex HTML/PDF targets. https://www.dereuromark.de/2026/07/13/twenty-years-of-markdown-hindsight-in-one-markup-language-carve/ #markup #documentation #opensource #php #js #rust

Documentation is still in your Mum's filing cabinet https://gerireid.com/blog/organising-documentation-for-humans-and-ai/ #HackerNews #Tech #Documentation

🔗 CLAUDE.md is RAM, not disk https://albertoarena.it/posts/claude-md-is-ram-not-disk/ #memory #documentation #productivity #optimization #claude

Want to make #openSUSE even better? Discover where you fit; #packaging, testing, #documentation, #design, and more. There's a place for everyone to contribute! #Linux 💚 contribute.opensuse.org

“Documentation is part of the feature” "Good documentation is product work, even when it does not get its own screenshot.” 👀 https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2026/07/01/release-20267/#documentation-is-part-of-the-feature

Good open source documentation has this quality where you can almost hear the developer's voice. Not formal, not robotic — just someone who understood the thing and wanted you to understand it too. The best docs are basically a friend explaining something over coffee. #OpenSource #Documentation

Programmers will document for Claude, but not for each other Link: https://blog.plover.com/2026/03/09/#documentation-wins-2 Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48411510

Programmers will document for Claude, but not for each other - https://blog.plover.com/2026/03/09/#documentation-wins-2 #hackernews

Find one document—a letter, a photograph, a receipt—that proves someone before you existed and kept moving. Hold it for sixty seconds. History is not abstract when it has a texture. The archive that matters starts in your hands. https://twp.ai/4hr1bg #History #Memory #QueerArchives #FamilyHistory #Documentation #KeepGoing #Trans #Queer #LGBTQIA+