User Documentation vs Code Comments

Developers should learn user documentation to improve product adoption, reduce user errors, and minimize support costs by providing self-service resources meets developers should use code comments to improve code readability, facilitate team collaboration, and aid in future maintenance, especially in complex or non-intuitive sections. Here's our take.

User Documentation

Nice Pick

Developers should learn user documentation to improve product adoption, reduce user errors, and minimize support costs by providing self-service resources

Pros

• It is essential when building consumer-facing applications, enterprise software, or open-source projects where user onboarding and retention are critical
• Related to: technical-writing, user-experience-design

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Code Comments

Developers should use code comments to improve code readability, facilitate team collaboration, and aid in future maintenance, especially in complex or non-intuitive sections

Pros

• They are essential for documenting APIs, explaining algorithms, noting edge cases, and providing context for legacy code, which reduces onboarding time and prevents errors during modifications
• Related to: code-documentation, clean-code

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

These tools serve different purposes. User Documentation is a methodology while Code Comments is a concept. We picked User Documentation based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

User Documentation wins

Based on overall popularity. User Documentation is more widely used, but Code Comments excels in its own space.