Software Engineering13:20–13:38Cinema 2

The Death of Documentation

Josh Gillies
Senior Software Engineer · Prefactor

For decades, documentation has been the "sacred bridge" between human intent and machine execution. Historically, this was born of necessity: when computer time was scarce, we had to document our plans perfectly before touching a terminal. But in the modern era, documentation has morphed into a static snapshot—often serving more as marketing material than technical truth.

Now, as we enter the age of AI-assisted development, the consumer of our code is changing. LLMs can read source code—the ultimate source of truth—with the same fluency as natural language. This talk draws on real-world experience building against rapidly evolving open-source systems to show why the future isn't about writing better manuals, but about embracing just-in-time understanding generated directly from the code.