Hi all -
Apologies if this is posted in the wrong place.
I'm constantly impressed by all the work independent devs do here to create Hubitat Apps and Drivers. Frequently, I come across something that seems like it would of interest or useful - but I'm not entirely sure what it is intended to do.
I suspect documentation is not a favorite activity for many , and when you're immersed in something, it's not easy to see what isn't obvious to others.
I would encourage Devs to start the description of any app or driver with a few sentences describing exactly what its purpose is and what benefits one might gain by using it. Some folks do an awesome job of this already. Please write those sentences for a reader who hasn't already been thinking about the topic and may have no sense of the context, existing gaps, or whatever motivated you to do the work. If what you write seems completely obvious, it's probably at the correct level!
I understand why it seldom happens, I'm guilty of doing the same thing. Once I get something working the way I envision it, I loose interest and have to struggle to document it to the point I can understand it 6 months from now.
Some things are obvious, some authors add good built-in documentation to their app, but other things are more obtuse. As an example, take a feature implemented as a virtual device; the instructions could basically say "Install via HPM, then add a virtual device of the new type, and configure the settings in the virtual device".
As someone who rarely reads all the documentation.... Thank you...
But seriously, yes, you have us in one. While I can get engrossed in writing documentation (occasionally), it often comes a distant second for the cool stuff we can do with code. But then I get a kick out of helping others here, which you do as much with code as with good instructions.... Still tempted by the code though....
Good post, good for someone to point out the importance of good documentation.
