It has been less than a year since I joined my current company. Their majority of sales have come from a single product that has been alive since the last 10 years. However, there is minimal (if at all) documentation. Not only do the developers in the company struggle with the lack of documentation but also there is a high amount of turnover, causing everyone to lose their time. This is because experienced developers have left the company and there is less and less resources to communicate/brain storm with.Without getting into too much detail, I have suggested to the previous manager that there needs to be some sort of documentation (at least an Architecture document) that outlines the product. I also suggested using JavaDoc and other automatic documentation tools. These suggestions were responded to by slight smiles and statements of the sort We do not have enough time, We need short-term improvements right now and even The code itself should be the documentation from the programmers themselves.I have already wasted enough time trying to find out if what I needed per requirement/bug had existed in this big (really) code base. I am looking for any suggestions that you might give regarding the need of documentation. Or, rather, if this is a lost case for this legacy system or organization.
How-to convince company to start documenting for legacy software
documentation;source code;legacy;documentation generation
I feel your pain.  I've been in this exact position before.My suggestion is to lead by example.  Start a wiki or document and start making notes.  Make repeated references to this document you're putting together.  If someone asks you a question, make a show of looking at the document for the answer first.  If the question isn't there, add it to the section of unanswered questions.  As it grows, share it with everyone.   Add time to document to your maintenance tasks.You have to grow this organically.  It needs a champion.  I'm not aware of any developer-driven argument that will make a company that doesn't care about documentation suddenly flip that switch.  Once it's in place, everyone will wonder how they got by without it.  Sadly, once you move on, it will probably become obsolete and die.