This talk has one simple message: please document your code. If you attend my talk, you'll hear me explain why I praise documentation, and why you should too.

While writing documentation is generally acknowledged to be a "good thing", most engineers do not document their work. I'll offer my optionated lament on the life and death of literate programming. A lament is a poetic discourse, expressing sadness, or feeling sorry about something. I'll give some examples of the bad things that can happen when people don't write documentation.

Then, after making you feel bad, I'll give examples of how you can feel good. I'll explain why writing documentation is a "good" edifying activity, which helps you to be a better person, and make a better world.

I'll review types of open source documentation (Python and Unix), documentation frameworks (Diátaxis), and Python tools (Sphinx, Jupyter, Quarto) you can try out as soon as my talk is finished.

Then, I'll get "cool n' futuristic" by talking about AI. I'll emphasise the importance of text to AI-assisted coding and agentic workflows for "spec-driven development" (e.g. Agent-OS with Claude Code), before tempering your excitement by giving you some old-fashioned advice on "good" writing style by George Orwell.

In summary, if you come to my talk, you might experience an unusual mixture of sadness combined with hope. To conclude, I'll tell you to "please document your code". You'll laugh, go to the next talk, and forget my advice.