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Documentation as Code (a.k.a. DoC) Approach in Software Architecture
Documentation as Code aka Docs-as-Code is a popular approach in Software Engineering in which dev team treats documentation same as the code. It means, documentation is written in same tools as software is written. This philosophy brings some advantages like:
- technical integrity: documentation is part of code and integrated to version control, CI/CD tools
- documentation is written together with software
- documentation can be reviewed in each sprint along with developed feature
- documentation is automatically generated with consistent format
Documentation with for example Microsoft Word bases on WYSIWYG word processors, where writer formats the text himself. In Docs-as-Code tools, the text format is automatically generated as you write in lightweight text format.
One of the very first examples of Docs-as-Code can be considered LaTeX that many of us know from our University years. But this does not count really to Docs-as-Code mentality.
Markdown or AsciiDoc are great lightweight markdown tools that are enabling easy documentation and perfectly integrated to scm tools like GitHub. README.md is a perfect example every time you create a new git repository.
