where can I find newbie guide for documentation for programmers?

Question

my boss is yelling at me about not documenting anything and so I need to start making official documentation. I need help with good software, good websites, good advice

thx

fyi I the only programmer in a company that only has 4 people, including the partners

Answer 1

You first need to have a specification for each program.
That is a detailed requirement from the user department, but you can write it from the information you were given.
What the program is required to do
What inputs will it get including window designs.
What outputs will be produced.
If the program reads or writes any files or databases then a detail of the data structure will be required.

Your program will contain lots of comments. These comments are not just for your benefit, but for anyone else that has to look at your program when half asleep at midnight and they want to go home. They need to understand quickly what the programmer thinks he is making the program do.
Also try and keep the code tidy. No one likes to look at a function that is 20 pages long with no gaps or comments.
The main thing to remember is to keep the code simple, short and easy to read. If you look at your program in a years time and thing what did I do that for then you have not got enough comments and the structure is bad.

A thechnical overview of what the program is supposed to be doing. This is more a detailed view of how you came to write the code that has been generated. Include any flowcharts, or other such diagrams that you used to help with the creation of the program. You did use flow charts didn't you! A sort of detail of the flow of the program with full descriptions. If this is OO then relational diagrams and any use cases that you produced.

A user document. This will probably not be at a program level but may be an overall document for the system. This will give details of the screens/windows that the user can expect to see, what inputs will be required and then what outputs are produced. Particular detail should be given to error messages or error conditions.

Other than the above you should find out what the other developers in your department are producing.
If the answer is nothing then the company is going to be in big trouble when I start working for them and digging you out of the hole that you have got yourself into!!

Answer 2

Something like one of these, perhaps?

http://www.google.com/search?q=documenting+programs&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a