Documenting OOP Libraries

In this post, I explore how to document an OOP library. By following established documentation patterns, technical writers can create predictable, structured content that enables developers to leverage your software library efficiently and effectively.

OOP documentation follows an imperative programming paradigm. This means that it focuses on how a program operates through a sequence of statements or instructions that change the program’s state. This allows the steps that are required to complete a task to be broken down and documented accordingly.

Let’s get into how this is documented!

When documenting OOP, you’re documenting the building blocks contained in the software libraries. Software libraries are collections of pre-written code, functions, and routines that developers use to perform common tasks without needing to write everything from scratch. They are designed to streamline development by providing reusable components, making coding more efficient, and reducing duplication of effort. The components in these libraries need to be thoroughly documented, detailing how they work and how developers integrate them into their projects.

From a top-down approach, the general building blocks look like this:

1. Classes – Blueprints that define the structure (attributes) and behaviors (methods) of objects.
2. Objects – Instances of classes. They are the concrete entities created based on the class blueprint and can execute the behaviors (methods).
3. Methods – Specific actions or behaviors that can be performed within a system. These are the functions associated with objects, and they define what tasks can be carried out.

Let’s start by learning about documenting Classes.