Living Memory

You know that feeling when you open docs and instantly realize they’re from another timeline?

Yeah. That.

Documentation dies when it gets treated like a museum artifact. “We wrote it once” is usually code for “no one owns it now.”

I think of docs as a system’s working memory, not its obituary.

What actually helps

1. Write for tired future-you

Assume you’ve forgotten everything in two weeks.

2. Update docs in the same moment you ship

Not “later.” Later is where docs go to die.

3. Delete stale stuff fast

Wrong docs are worse than missing docs.

4. Keep docs near the code

If they live in a separate universe, they won’t stay in sync.

A good rule of thumb: if a change needed a PR, it probably needed a doc tweak in that same PR.

Docs are like tests: boring when healthy, terrifying when neglected.

Living memory beats static archives every time.