Development PracticesConference50min
Why Documentation Won’t Write Itself—and AI Won’t Save You
The talk argues that AI won’t solve poor documentation. It presents practical principles for keeping docs close to code, separating architecture/API/code-level documentation, and preventing decay. Key takeaway: missing context remains missing unless teams make deliberate documentation decisions first.
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Christian HeitzmannSimplexaCode AG
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Wednesday, October 7, 15:10-16:00
TBA 5
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For the last nearly two decades, I’ve joined and consulted software teams that all struggled with the same problem: nobody likes writing documentation, and everybody pays the price for it. New developers spend weeks reverse-engineering codebases, architecture lives in people’s heads, and wikis quietly decay into noise.
With AI now entering the picture, many hope it will fill the gaps. It won’t.
I’ll show the simple ideas that change everything: how to think about documentation in the right levels, how to keep it close to the code, and how to avoid the decay we all know too well. These are the decisions that have to be made before any tool or process can work.
The documentation won’t write itself. But there are ways to make it far easier and far more reliable.
Key take-aways:
• How to separate architecture, API, and code-level documentation
• What “docs as code” means once the slogans are gone
• Why missing context stays missing—with or without AI
With AI now entering the picture, many hope it will fill the gaps. It won’t.
I’ll show the simple ideas that change everything: how to think about documentation in the right levels, how to keep it close to the code, and how to avoid the decay we all know too well. These are the decisions that have to be made before any tool or process can work.
The documentation won’t write itself. But there are ways to make it far easier and far more reliable.
Key take-aways:
• How to separate architecture, API, and code-level documentation
• What “docs as code” means once the slogans are gone
• Why missing context stays missing—with or without AI
Christian Heitzmann
Christian Heitzmann, MSc ETH CSE, is the owner of SimplexaCode AG in Lucerne, Switzerland. His professional certifications include Java, Python, and Spring. He holds teaching diplomas in both Computer Science and Mathematics, as well as a CAS in Machine Learning. With over 20 years of experience in professional software development and over 15 years in teaching and training, he works as a developer, documentation consultant, and trainer, bringing order to software, documentation, and data.