
6/9 Research Software Engineering with Python (COMP233) - Documentation
From UCL for Code in Research by Peter Schmidt
November 13, 2025 · 17 min · Season 2 · Episode 6
About this episode
This episode discusses the importance of software documentation and the different levels of documentation needed for software engineers.
Documentating software is part of the life of software engineers. But what kind of documentation do we need? In this episode I take you through three levels of documentation: the basic README and LICENSE files everyone should have, how to be good at writing git commit messages and using tools to turn your source code comments into browsable documentation. Links https://www.sphinx-doc.org/https://pdoc.dev/docs/pdoc.htmlhttps://docs.python.org/3/library/pydoc.htmlhttps://wiki.python.org/moin/Do...
People in this episode
Host: Peter Schmidt
Topics covered
- software documentation
- software engineering
- Python
- git commit messages
- source code comments
Keywords
- documentation
- README
- LICENSE
- git commit messages
- browsable documentation
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Python, Sphinx, pdoc, Git
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