Documentation drives developer experience. Here’s why.

Picture this: you’re about to wrap up for the weekend and you receive an urgent call from a developer on your team. They just found a critical bug affecting users, but there’s a problem: the code is old, written in an unfamiliar language, and completely undocumented. As the developer tries to make sense of this legacy code, valuable time slips away. The lack of documentation has turned a straightforward fix into a frustrating and time-consuming ordeal, jeopardizing your project and frustrating your team.

This situation is all too common and perfectly illustrates how missing or outdated documentation can disrupt the core dimensions of developer experience, as defined in the study “DevEx: What Actually Drives Productivity.” These core dimensions—flow state, feedback loops, and cognitive load—are all negatively impacted without proper documentation.

Developers lose their flow, wasting time searching for answers instead of coding. Feedback loops slow down as they struggle to understand changes and context without reliable references. Meanwhile, cognitive load increases, making it even harder to focus on what truly matters.

The lack of documentation turned a simple fix into a complex ordeal. This ordeal ended up costing valuable development time and causing project delays. This scenario isn’t uncommon. For many teams today, the lack of effective and up to date documentation isn’t a minor inconvenience. It’s a significant obstacle that impacts the entire software development lifecycle. It’s also something that could have been avoided altogether. 

At Swimm, we know that good and effective internal documentation is key to a better developer experience. Here’s why: 

The problem with PRs

Pull requests are an essential part of development. However, when changes to your codebase aren’t documented or lack clarity, PRs become a bottleneck. Reviewers spend more time trying to understand the changes, which disrupts their workflow and pulls them away from their core tasks. This not only slows down development but also hampers collaboration and leads to superficial reviews that might miss critical issues.

Swimm’s solution is our PR2Doc feature. PR2Doc enables developers to generate a comprehensive document directly from a PR, providing the reviewer with immediate context so that the process is more efficient. When clear documentation exists, reviewers can focus on the more important aspects of the changes. This ultimately speeds up feedback loops and reduces the cognitive load on both the reviewer and the author of the code.

Onboarding and knowledge transfer

Without an effective strategy for transferring knowledge, onboarding new developers or transitioning existing ones to unfamiliar areas of the codebase becomes an unnecessary challenge. The lack of documentation makes these processes inefficient, as developers have to rely on experienced team members to fill in the gaps. This dependency not only slows down the onboarding process but also ties up the more senior developers who could be focusing on more strategic work.

Swimm’s Auto-docs feature allows you to create comprehensive documentation for an entire repository with just a few clicks, making it easy to backfill missing documentation even for legacy codebases. This documentation also provides valuable context for Swimm’s AI chat feature. With /ask Swimm, new team members or developers unfamiliar with the codebase can ask questions and receive answers tailored to the specifics of your code. This helps them quickly understand the context and functionality of the codebase without needing extensive guidance from senior developers. 

In fact, our data shows that teams using Swimm reduce developer onboarding time by more than 50% and require 75% less time from senior developers to guide new team members through the codebase.​

Maintaining flow state 

We all know just how important it for developers to maintain their flow state. However, this flow is often disrupted by the need to switch contexts, search for missing information, or pause to clarify undocumented code. These interruptions not only slow down progress but also reduce overall job satisfaction and productivity.

Swimm minimizes these disruptions by embedding documentation directly into the IDE. With Swimm’s IDE plugins, developers can access relevant documentation right alongside their code, allowing them to maintain focus and stay in the flow state longer. They can also use the AI chat feature to answer questions and create new documentation without ever leaving their IDE. This seamless integration ensures that the information they need is always at their fingertips, reducing the need for context switching and keeping them engaged with their work.

Tackling legacy code

Legacy code is often the backbone of many businesses. They’re complex, written in outdated languages, and are poorly documented (if they are at all). Understanding legacy code in order to maintain it or modernize it without comprehensive documentation is a near herculean feat. Leading to delays, longer code understanding phases, and errors that will impact your project timeline. 

Swimm offers a different approach from the traditional path of refactoring. Instead of attempting to document the entire codebase, Swimm focuses on creating targeted documentation for the most complex or critical areas.

This strategy helps teams quickly gain the necessary understanding of the code, reducing the likelihood of errors due to missing context. Additionally, by maintaining up-to-date documentation, Swimm prevents new legacy issues from arising, ensuring that crucial knowledge is preserved and cognitive load is minimized for developers.

Wrapping up 

Good documentation is the foundation of an excellent developer experience. Swimm helps development teams maintain their flow state, streamline feedback loops, and reduce cognitive load – the three dimensions of devex.

Our solution not only improves productivity but also enhances team collaboration and morale, transforming documentation from a burden into a strategic advantage. Ensure that your team spends less time deciphering undocumented code and more time building the software that drives your business forward.