Question

I am building my first complex app (in RoR) and as I think about passing it on to new programmers, I have been thinking about the best ways to document what I’m building.

How do you like to document your work?

Are there softwares or websites that allow one to easily accumulate sections of documentation, perhaps with tagging for easy reference later on?

Answer 1

I like to use a wiki. I think it would meet all the goals you named:

• an easy way to have various pages and sections
• searching and tagging is usually built-in

Plus, there are other features:

• You can allow others to help out with the documentation
• The docs can grow as they need to: Start out with just a simple one-page site. Then expand when it makes sense.

My two favorites are pbworks.com for private projects: it’s free for some uses, and lets you set permissions to private. My other favorite is github, which includes a wiki with every project you create.