
28 ◾ Software Essentials
Whatever its form, documentation should provide an overview of the
system as well as its core functionality: developers should not depend on
a serial analysis of individual components to comprehend the form and
eect of a system. Developers gain at best a module-level perspective if
they must depend on perusing individual components for descriptions.
A module-based perspective inhibits parallel development: programmer
A cannot develop module X while programmer B develops module Y if
module X is dependent on the design of module Y. Complex soware sys-
tems require a “summary model.”
Internal documentation should c ...