On 10/26/2009 1:10 PM Dave M spake thus:

William Sommerwerck wrote:

[someone unknown wrote:]

Documentation is considered an afterthought in many firms.
Years ago, I adopted the approach of writing the *manual* for
any product that I designed *before* designing the product (!).

The man who created "Mathematica" did exactly that. It is a terrific
idea, because it puts the focus on how the user interacts with the
product, before any code is written.

I totally agree with that approach. Waaay back when I was writing
database applications for a living, I found that writing the user
manual and designing the reports before starting the coding made life
MUCH easier for me. It gave me the logical flow of the program, the
user interface and most of the database design up front, where it's
easiest to change and get customer approval with least impact on the
project.

Plus, on a more elementary level, it increases the chance that what the
manual says and how the program works (and, more importantly,
*reads*--menu options, commands, dialogs, etc.) actually match. (What a
concept!)


--
Found--the gene that causes belief in genetic determinism