ms word is bad for documentation

Every time I have to document code or architecture in Word, I get upity. It's not that Word isn't good for creating documents, it is in fact great at creating nice looking documents. The problem is that code is a living creature, and word documents generally aren't. They are written and forgotten, filed away and lost. I generally envision the giant storage warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

So like many other developers I push for documentation via wiki. Depending on your environment this may hard to accomplish. If your lucky enough to be using subversion for version control, then you can just setup trac. Trac just happens to provide everything one would need for a lively quick moving project, a wiki, subversion browser, ticket management, and wiki syntax linking them all. The wiki-ticket integration is great for impromptu code reviews. Not to mention the RSS feeds with links to changesets.

So far trac has been a hit at every place I've worked. It takes a culture change, but it's worth it. Give it a try if you haven't already. If your coming from in-house sharepoint and sourcesafe pairings, it'll be a refreshing change.