Documenting Software

Questions by Thorsten Brunzendorf in September 2019

What value have you found recently in software documentation? Can you give examples?
Some people state that code should be self documenting. Which subjects can you think of that might need more documentation than code alone and why?
How do you document software architecture? And which aspects of it?
Under which conditions do you consider tests as documentation?
When and how do you produce API documentation?
Where do you store documentation?
How do you make it easy to find and access documentation?
What is the role of vcs commit messages for documentation purposes?
In which way do you consider code comments as documentation?
How do you keep your documentation up to date?
When is it worth to guarantee or check automatically that software and its documentation are in sync - sometimes referred to as “Living Documentation”?
Who is supposed to take ownership of software documentation?
Which types of documentation should be considered an output artifact in its own right?
What should NOT be documented?