this post was submitted on 31 May 2026
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Programming

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Domain Expertise Has Always Been the Real Moat (www.brethorsting.com)
submitted 6 days ago by cm0002@libretechni.ca to c/programming@programming.dev
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[–] cschreib@programming.dev 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think this will depend on the industry. Slow vs fast moving, regulated vs not, whether someone depends on your API or not, etc.

But regardless, having had to deal with some legacy code written 10 years ago by someone who isn't working at the company anymore, I would take an outdated spec over none at all. At least then I know what people intended back then, what they cared about, what they had and hadn't considered. As long as the spec is written by a human, that information is surely valuable.

[–] mabeledo@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

But regardless, having had to deal with some legacy code written 10 years ago by someone who isn’t working at the company anymore, I would take an outdated spec over none at all. At least then I know what people intended back then, what they cared about, what they had and hadn’t considered. As long as the spec is written by a human, that information is surely valuable.

I see your point, and I think I would partially agree. I guess that, to me, specs need to be more of a live document than something someone writes and gets forgotten over time. I still think that thoroughly commenting code and having a strong E2E test suite is a better option overall.