>>Nikki
>>
>>Ha! Consultant! That's their job - to document, criticise and, ultimately, cock-up. cf a chef vs a food critic, playwright vs critic, artist vs art critic, cat vs a flea, bowel vs a tape-worm.
>
>LOL!!!
>
>>
>>I *did* go the full nine yards university degree route, learned all that stuff, loads on documenting a system before and as developing, but in the real world one doesn't always have the time to do all, and usually a boss patient and generous enough to pay you for that period.
>>
>>IMHO putting good comments in your code as you go along, writing meaningful names and functions, etc, (eg lnRecordCount vs XX) goes a long, long way.
>>
>
>Aw c'mon - using X (not XX - far too lengthy) as the standard variable, object, cursor, program and control name saves typing time and disk space.

Saves disk space! lol

Periodically I have to maintain an old FPD26 system, written by a guy who wouldn't know a structure if he tripped over it - vast monolithic code with loops within loops within every manner of construct (sometimes a do loop is 100 m long!), and he suddenly refers to a var XX or YY or wwhatever, and I don't know if it;s been created on-the-fly, scoped outside the current proc, global or what. In fact, I've no idea what it's for.

>
>>functional analysis and program analysis? You gotta ask first who is gonna read it and when. And if they do, who ever will again?
>>
>Agree - I've only seen real attempts at program documentation on a few projects, and they absolutely never were even close to up-to-date and were, for the most part, useless.

I worked for a company who employed Anderson Consultants, who introduced their docn. standards. I preferred to call it deforestation, with the likes of one A4 sheet of paper to describe each field in a table, one for each table, and so on, hierarchically up and down. In the end the whole sorry mess was destined to just collect dust in a store cupboard (which tons of it would fill)

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>>As for user manual: Well, if as you say, all hands in the company know the system, and they're the users, what's the point? If it's for others then I'd approve. As a matter of fact, that's just what I'm doing at the moment.
>>
>
>I do think a user manual is a good thing in a larger organization, but again the only one I ever saw that was up-to-date was one my company did for a client as we wrote their application. The manual was not kept up-to-date after it was released to the client.
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>IMO a user manual is something that should be written by users, not developers. The developers understand the underlying program but generally do not understand the program usage from a user POV. It's one thing to say that a certain button does something - it's another to give the business process and reason a user should push the button.

Something I quite like doing as a matter of fact. I believe I have the command of English (one of my loves) and empathy with the user, to document the system in a sympathetic way, not too technical, and attractively. Generally though I'd agree with you. Why, just look at the explanations that Foxpro give US in Help. Take the explanation of .value for instance: "Specifies the current state of a control". Why not "the value that is currently held in a control"? "State" could mean "disabled", "undergoing edit" - anything! And that's just one!

>
>
>>My two penn'orth
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>>Terry
>>
>>
>>>i hv been a progrmmer for a few years most of it self taught, no fancy college stuff. recently our company hired a consultant and he was surprised that i hv not yet created a
>>>
>>>functional analysis
>>>program analysis
>>>user manual
>>>
>>>of the program
>>>
>>>and a lot of other stuff,
>>>
>>>we only have 5 employees in our company, everyone knows the program inside out.
>>>
>>>my question here is
>>>
>>>1. how important are these things and what are these things (except the user manual which i understand)
>>>
>>>2. is the consultant just trying to impress my boss
>>>
>>>3. what other documentations are there which are necessary to be done along with the program?
>>>
>>>4. where do i get to learn all this stuff?
>>>
>>>any help is welcome
>>>
>>>thanks