In this chapter, we have explored the difficult art of authoring clean documentation, breaking it down into the four vital aspects of clean documentation: concept, specification, instruction, and usability. We've discussed the challenge of correctly identifying our audience and how to craft our communications to suit them. This knowledge will not only be useful in crafting formal documentation, but also in our everyday communications with stakeholders and within our software when it needs to communicate with users.
In the next chapter, we move swiftly on to the unique challenge of dealing with other peoples' code. What happens when we, on the receiving end of potentially poor documentation or unintuitive code, need to be productive? We'll find out.
