Dry Documentation vs Wet Documentation

Developers should adopt Dry Documentation when working on large or rapidly evolving projects where manual documentation updates are prone to errors and become time-consuming meets developers should use wet documentation when working on projects where documentation tends to become outdated quickly, such as in agile environments or with rapidly changing apis, as it enforces synchronization between code and docs. Here's our take.

Dry Documentation

Nice Pick

Developers should adopt Dry Documentation when working on large or rapidly evolving projects where manual documentation updates are prone to errors and become time-consuming

Pros

• It is particularly useful in agile environments, open-source projects, or teams using continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, as it ensures documentation stays synchronized with code changes
• Related to: documentation-as-code, api-documentation

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Wet Documentation

Developers should use Wet Documentation when working on projects where documentation tends to become outdated quickly, such as in agile environments or with rapidly changing APIs, as it enforces synchronization between code and docs

Pros

• It's particularly valuable for libraries, frameworks, or internal tools where accurate, up-to-date documentation is critical for usability and reduces the risk of misleading information
• Related to: documentation-generation, code-comments

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

Use Dry Documentation if: You want it is particularly useful in agile environments, open-source projects, or teams using continuous integration/continuous deployment (ci/cd) pipelines, as it ensures documentation stays synchronized with code changes and can live with specific tradeoffs depend on your use case.

Use Wet Documentation if: You prioritize it's particularly valuable for libraries, frameworks, or internal tools where accurate, up-to-date documentation is critical for usability and reduces the risk of misleading information over what Dry Documentation offers.

The Bottom Line

Dry Documentation wins

Developers should adopt Dry Documentation when working on large or rapidly evolving projects where manual documentation updates are prone to errors and become time-consuming