Developers Who Don't Document Code? Blame The Bosses
computerworld, Friday, August 22nd, 2025
Developers have every reason to not document their work unless they are forced to - and IT managers have every reason to not make them do it.
One of the top enterprise IT complaints is that a serious lack of documentation - especially for legacy systems' homegrown code - makes operations much more complex and riskier than they need be.
What's rarely discussed are the reasons why there's such a severe documentation shortage. The sad truth is that the blame mostly lies with IT managers - particularly those in charge back when the coding happened and the documentation didn't. (Before you judge your predecessors' predecessors too harshly, how often do you insist that current coding efforts under your authority have comprehensive and accurate documentation?)