• Joel Spolsky maintains a fascinating, well written, informative, opinionated and amusing web site at http://www.joelonsoftware.com/index.html. Your assignment is to visit it, surf around, and write the usual few paragraphs about what you find. (Some of you may want to try to read the Chinese version - simple or traditional.) I don't want just a plot summary - I've criticized some of you for some of that in the past. (The site is much too big to summarize in any case.) I'd like you to find two or three or four specific articles or discussions that you found interesting. Then respond to them. Do you agree or disagree (why)? How do they connect to other things we have read or studied? What will or won't be useful in your current projects? Some of the links are to forums - feel free to contribute.

  There's so much here that part of your task should be to find the stuff that interests you most. Recommend parts to your classmates, too.

• On Tuesday November 13 Constance Lewis will speak to us about documentation. The last time she gave a guest lecture in CS681 she asked for some written homework in advance. This time just think about the following questions before she comes.
  1. Find (or write) a page or two of good documentation and a page or two of bad documentation.

  2. Think about what makes the good documentation good and the bad, bad.

  3. List the participants on a software project who are responsible for the quality of the documentation, and describe briefly what the responsibility of each participant is (or should be).

1. Do you think documentation is valuable? If so, why? If not, why not?

2. What makes documentation good? If possible, bring a short example of good documentation to class.

3. What makes documentation bad? If possible, bring a short example of bad documentation to class.

4. Why do you think many technical writers get involved with user interface design?

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