I thought I'd become accustomed to the fad of taking fairly ordinary things and renaming them using the word “technology” – computers being Information Technology, toilets being Waste Removal Technology, that kind of thing – but I was really thrown today by a van outside the building with “Entrance Technology” written on the side.

It took a couple of minutes and a closer inspection for me to work out that they were talking about doors.

*jarring chord*

I don't like writing documentation. In particular, I don't like writing functional specifications, which is what I'm avoiding doing by writing this instead.

“But Simes,” you are no doubt saying, “How can it be that one who hurls words around with such abandon as yourself can have difficulty in producing a simple piece of technical literature? Surely it would be a mere bagatelle.”*

And so you might think. But the bugger of it is, while I don't have a problem with sitting down with someone and having a conversation beginning with the words “The way it works, right, is this,” I can't seem to translate that into the fairly dry and comprehensive form demanded by this kind of documentation. Possibly because the conversation would involve quite a bit of backtracking and questioning and me making sure I'd explained myself properly, while the typing of the documentation involves none of that. I'm sure the fact that I can't simply fling words around with abandon when writing these documents also has something to do with it.

There's also the fact that writing specifications after the code is done seems a trifle arse-about-face to me, but I've never found it any easier to do it beforehand either.

Oh well. Enough time wasted, I suppose. Back to the grind.

* OK, you're probably not saying that.

Over a week with nothing to raise my ire. I'm either mellowing out or too tired to be bothered.

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