HackerAfter a handoff, how do you recover the reason for a decision?
Start with the reason preserved in a comment, then find the work and results a new maintainer can check.
Questions in this reading · 1
Where do you leave the rationale and the record of a run?
Bryan Cantrill describes comments as a way to preserve why an approach was chosen. The speaker in Literate Devops puts the reason for an investigation, the code run, and the results in one Org Mode document. Colleagues can trace how the data was produced and how it was used.
At handoff, pick a decision someone might revisit. Ask whether the next maintainer can find the reasoning and a record of the work they can check again. One explains the team’s original judgment. The other gives the new maintainer a way to investigate it.
Passages and timestamps · 2
they explain not only what's going on but they give you a narrative as to whya thread of data generation and UsageTry it on your own example
Choose some code you maintain and locate both the original reason and a check you can repeat. Which still requires asking the author?