What Is Program Documentation?

The program documentation is a kind of documentation that gives a comprehensive procedural description of a program. It shows as to how software is written. Program documentation even has the capability to sustain any later maintenance or development of the program. The program documentation describes what exactly a program does by mentioning about the requirements of the input data and the effect of performing a programming task.

Thus, if you want to know what a program is meant to do and how it has to be executed, you should refer to the program documentation. The most common examples would be the instruction manuals for a software product, which is given to the end-user. Thus the instruction manual for a programming language like Java or for understanding a word processor can come under the purview of program documentation. The description languages used are informal and are intended to make life easy for the end-user.

There is also another kind of program documentation that is written for the sake of programmers who write the actual software and may have to modify it or use it as a part of another program which they write in the future. While the end-user documentation has a user-friendly language about the software, the program documentation describes things in a language which can befit the programmer.

It describe about the program ie input, output, logic applied in the program, flowchart/Algorithm, any drawbacks, output sample etc.

Program documentation includes hard-copy or electronic manuals that enable users, program developers, and operators to interact successful with a program. User documentation normally consists of a user's manual. This manual may provide instructions for running the program. A description of software commands, several useful examples of applications, and troubleshooting guide to help with difficulties. Program developers include people who design, write, test and maintain programs that is anyone contributing to the software development process.

Developer documentation usually consists of tools that will simplify any development task. Such tools might include program examples, a description of the design tools incorporated into the product, instructions for debugging and testing, maintain tips and so on. Since developers are highly literate about computers, developer documentation is written at a more technical level than documentation. Developer documentation is also increasingly becoming electronic. Operator documentation includes online and hard-copy manuals that assist machine operators in setting up hardware devices, learning the ins and outs of successful hardware operation, and diagnosing machine malfunctions. Operator documentation is machine dependent and unless one has a good grounding in hardware specifies, it can be difficult to read through.