How to Document Your Code Like a Pro
In this video, I’ll share the essential principles for creating clear, concise, and effective code documentation. From commenting to docstrings, you’ll learn how to make your code documentation shine and improve accessibility for others.
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👀 Code reviewers:
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- Ryan Laursen
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🔖 Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:01 Code documentation
3:02 #1 Comments
6:46 #2 Type hints
10:44 #3 Docstrings
13:24 #4 ChatGPT
15:20 #5 mkdocs
17:22 Final thoughts
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I like the idea of making the code fairly self-documenting by making good choices of class/function/var names. And adding comments that explain WHY things are being done, not how. My merge requests are reviewed by someone else, so it's a fun challenge to make sure everything is clear enough that the reviewer won't ask me any annoying questions. And yes, I want to make sure then when I come back in a year or two, it's easy for me to remember what the heck I was doing in the code...
Yes the why is what matters. And when that explanation becomes too hard to understand it’s time to refactor :)
I want to add to these remarks that I feel grouping code that does work on the same aspect of your system is also very important for understanding and maintaing your code base. If you have a class that has many hundreds or even thousands of lines of code, identify all the different things it does, re-organize the code to group together functions that have the same context, and then refactor that out into different modules/classes. That makes your code base much easier to understand, search through and adapt.
Definitely leaning more towards self documenting myself after trying out full docstrings and then autodoc with sphinx. Navigating the code is an important part of readability
Great video as always. I might have added unit tests here as a form of documentation. Unit tests can also have clear names, and their docstrings can comment on how edge cases are handled. If I'm coming back to code I wrote six months ago, it's the first place I go.
Thank you for your precious advices. I think I become a better developper with your videos.
Summary: - Code should be written in a way that promotes readability and is easy to understand for other developers. - Good documentation can take different forms such as comments, documentation sites, and API documentation. - Comments should provide meaningful explanations and not simply describe the syntax of the code. - Using type hints in Python code improves clarity and understanding. - Docstrings can be used to document functions, methods, classes, and modules, and tools like Auto docstring can assist in generating them.
Thank you Arjan this is pretty good tutorial I like you always do quick reasoning about motivation behind each documentation fragment. My general rule of thumb for `comments`. Comment has to explain "WHY" the code is here, not "WHAT" this part of code doing. If I have to write WHAT the code does, it means I messed up naming or code structure.
I really, really appreciate the production values of your videos. Always love seeing your code on screen. It’s crisp, lol. Keep it up 💪🏾 Regarding the topic, I love it. I’m really trying to set some standards for documentation on our team, this is some good stuff
Thanks for sharing!
I like more verbose docstrings on functions and methods because they appear in the mouseover in the IDE. That allows me to more easily see the parameters etc. without having to open the file containing the method or function.
Very good points. Whenever I have just spent an hour figuring out how something works, I fervently wish that the original author had taken three minutes to document that instead. _Especially_ when that original author was me. 😏
Another suggestion for making your code more readable is adding units of measurement to the variable names. In this example, it would be nice if the parameter to the deposit and withdraw function would be called amount_in_cents or amount_in_euros etc.
Arjan, this video is great! You are the guy! Thank you!
Thank you, Mario!
super vidéo très utile et très attendue sur KZhead
Wow, whenever I watch your videos, I learn something. Better Comments, using now! Thanks
Thank you!
This is something I have been trying to get my team to do better. This is a very good into to what good code documentation should look like
Thanks David!
helpfull i was anxety about find some easy way to document my project, and i found here ^^
Glad it helped!
Thanks for the video, it gives some great tips! I'd like to comment on some aspects (being a technical writer _and_ a developer) and would also like to share some of my experiences what I made from both roles: * Docstrings are awesome Yes, sometimes docstrings take more space than the actual documentation. If this is a public function or method, that shouldn't prevent us to write it. If the doc is autogenerated (like an API), the doc should be complete. * Focus on your target group(s). If your doc is autogenerated, it is probably more focused on developers. But depending on your project, developer docs are maybe not enough. Also take users and tutorials in mind. * Autogenerated API documentation isn't a replacement for user docs. It looks easy and it's tempting to get the impression, "I documented all functions and modules, so I have all documentation." This is the wrong approach. Depending on what you write in your docstring, a pure autogenerated API documentation listing only the functions and parameters is pretty useless. It doesn't tell you _how to use_ the project. We need flesh to the bones: some examples and context.
TNX, Nice
Great tips! That would also be helpful if you make a video on how to write useful "git comments". Thanks!
Noted!
You know its going to be a good day when you open a module and the line counter stretches to 6 digits, adds a horizontal scrollbar on your widescreen, and there is only one docstring at the top. '''Abandon all hopes ye who enters here.'''
I only make fully filled google style docstrings for my packages of the classes and functions that the package user is interacting with, and which I have documented using mkdocs. All other code will have a simple typehint and a short summary in the doc string.
Thanks
Regarding the docstrings I think it really depends on the use case, if you are writing a code for a project like an API for an app frontend or a data pipeline or some other type of product then it doesn't really make sense to write a docstrings because as you said the main goal should be for the code to be as clean and structured as possible and that should be enough, because adding docstrings basically just duplicates the stuff you already do in natural language and in case of bugs it can lead to even harder debugging because you could potentially inspect the docstring and move on. However the use case where it is absolutely necessary is for example writing libraries, the user of the library has to know what is going on with the function and all the arugments passed to it and it doesn't really make sense for him to go in the implementation rather he will read the method docstring and that's it.
Man, I wish I knew you when I started programming. Currently I work in a Brazilian Company that provides R&D services on Robotics and Computer Vision globe wide. We're great researchers, but terrible on writing quality code. I'll force everyone in the company to watch you!
Wow! Thanks for sharing that and for your support!
Outsourcing most of my documentation to LLMs
About docstrings taking up too much space: It really depends on the style used, e.g. a section in numpy style takes at minimum 4 lines (title, -----, name, description) while in google style it's collapsed down to only two ("title:", "name: description")
What is the shortcut used for auto imports ?
The industry shift towards 'self-documenting code', where the naming and coding style itself explains the goal of the code, has been a good thing (IMHO). There have been times where some 10-15 year old code works one way, but the comments never got updated to agree. Some maintainer along the way just couldn't be bothered to 'fix the comments'. And not to sound TOO MUCH like some old 'boomer', but yes, there is a ton of code out there that has to be maintained that is probably older than half of all comp-sci degrees awarded. lol A few times when good comments really help is when you find yourself employing some 'trick'. Some coders like to keep some 'trick' all secretive (like maybe 'bit-twidling' some float to extract a fraction or shift lower-case ASCII to upper). They get a bit smug and make statements like, "Well if you were a good programmer, you wouldn't need a comment to understand this." But adding a tiny comment to explain some obscure detail is the mark of a really good coder.
cool!
Is there any reason why you picked the mypy format for docstrings? Is it the one that you use?
Just as I am writing docstrings and READMEs
Sometimes thise comments that explains simple code are helpful. Because they're plain English (or your language) you can quickly get the gist of what's happening as if your reading a book. I will then look at the code if I want further details.
If you need to explain your code in plain English, this *may* be an indication that the code is bad and needs rewriting.
@@edgeeffect No. Stop this sheepish nonsense. Perfect readable code doesn't exist. Go look at any of the Rust, Python, C++, C#, etc. source code. Sometimes your code is doing something complex and you dont need indentation, syntax, and error handling to get in the way. You just want to get to the meat and bones pretty quickly. Also you don't need to rewrite everything. Just been you don't understand it doesn't mean nobody understands it.
I would love to build some visual documentation tool or something .
you ar best
Thank you so much!
Is there a summary function for Better comments? Even if colored, they are still hidden within the code.
I think that Sphinx could also be a great way to improve our documentation. I suggest to include this tool maybe in a part 2 or in an extension of this video. Thanks so much for making so interesting and complementary topics for the Python Community! 🐍 💻
Thank you!
Came here from the Python Weekly :)
I always name my most critical variable ‘x’.
Re: Documentation taking up more space than code and making it harder to see. Is there not a way to auto fold all docs?
I am struggling to include a table from an excel .xlsx file in my sphiinx documentation. If anyone has done this, I would appreciate some pointers.
When giving a typehint for an argument of the same type as the self class, instead of Self one can use "": "BankAccount" in this case. This way you don't need to include anything.
I have two problems with typehints. First, imagine I have a class defined in a file and in another file I have a function that takes as a parameter an instance of that class. To use typehints I import the class in the function file and because I need the function in the class file I also import the function file in the class. This is an obvious problem because I do circular imports. They way of solving this is putting the function inside the class file but I dont know if this is a good practice or not (I mean it should be the good practice if you can't use typehints without an import, that's really my question, can you use type hints without an import?) The other problem is with typehints and numpy, I also like to have an strict type checker but with numpy I don't know how to use it, sometimes I have used the ArrayLike type but the type checker goes nuts.
I could be wrong, but I think if you surround the typehint in quotes ("), then it forward declares it and you don't need the import, e.g. -> "ObjectFromOtherFile". Also for type hinting numpy arrays you can use np.ndarray
I've tried to generate the documentation of my django project with mkdocstrings. After testing a few things and exploring further, I managed to get the yml file working with django. Then I installed with the python-legacy handler ... and It more or less works ... until ModelForms are discovered ... and then it crashes ! When I'm trying the same with the new python handler whcich does not execute the code ... I end up with empty documentation pages (official documentation say that the experimental new handler is not yet compatible with Django) ... Could anybody tell me how to generate docstring documentation on a Django app? ... or how could I bypass specific functions, classes or modules ?
Best way to document your code is with tests. They define what the code does and they are always up-to-date
Sadly employees feel punished for writing documentation that is too good, because it becomes an employers guide for replacing you with a lower paid person.
If you make yourself too irreplaceable then you make it harder to get promoted.
If you do great work to a level that you are replaceable at any moment, you are irreplaceably valuable. Any project, any initiative, any codebase will want to have you
You are right, I do feel punished for having my PR fail because I didn't write a docstring on an init method with 2-3 vars that are fully annotated. Write simple, explanatory code and document what's needed, comments are going to get dated anyway and become more confusing to users. That's just reality.
Based on personal experience being the only one who knows the details of an "in house developed" software is no guarantee against layoffs, but it will make sure that you will have trouble going on a hokiday without being disturbed.
@OP If you are in an environment like that, and don‘t get fired for not enabling knowledge transfer, you are part of the problem and did not find a solution. Because you don’t get promoted or even fired since the next guy to you is doing the same thing. Try to set an example, if it doesn’t work get out of these places or be fine in being caught in a vicious cycle of despair reinforcing your own pain.
I dont like the direction your content on this channel is going recently. I started watching your content because I felt you were discussing more intermediate to advanced topics, did code reviews in that way and so. Your strength lies - imho - in breaking down these topics in a simple and concise way that's easy to understand for everyone. Your recent posts however are really beginner tutorials of which there are so many in youtube. You are still doing it in your usual great way, but I don't really see a reason anymore to watch any of your content if you are going to be just one of the many python beginner youtubers. Your channel, your choice, of course. So make of that what you will!
This video is very informative for me and it's good he has a mixture of beginner to intermediate/advanced topics that cater to everyone. I don't see anyone else talk about some of the points he brought up tbh
Some of my recent coding videos are about building a tool on top of the OpenAI API, functions vs classes, pandas/pandera for data validation, sql query builders vs ORMs. I'm surprised you consider these topics beginner-level.
Do a Mojo video 👍
I've used to put docstrings on everything that was more than few lines long but then I've started applying clean code concepts and my code is self documented, I only ever use the single line # comments nowadays.
the docstring part is a basic feature of pycharm what overall is a create ide for python imao
I have the issue that certain shortcuts in vs code do not work (I assume the issue is that a shortcut is used multiple times by various extensions so vs code does not know what to do) Can you show how to handle this in a video? br
I started programming in the 80’s. I did a lot of code archeology. The running joke about documentation was if the code was hard to write it should be hard to read
The code tells you how, comments tell you why.
I like Sphinx.