The notebook index
Earlier notes
Earlier reference notes remain available at their existing addresses. The current blog concentrates on programming languages, protocols and self-hosted software.
310 notes.
- What Is a Useful README Structure for a Small Tool?
A small tool’s README should quickly explain its purpose, then guide a reader through setup and use while making configuration, limits, and support easy to find.
- How Do You Document a GTFS Feed’s Service Range?
A feed’s service range is best described as dates with scheduled service, alongside exceptions and the caveat that calendar coverage alone does not prove every trip runs.
- What Should an API Reference Say About Rate Limits?
Rate-limit documentation should state the limit’s scope and window, describe what a client observes when it is exceeded, and give bounded retry guidance.
- How Can Documentation Distinguish Required and Optional Fields?
Presence labels help readers validate data only when they are explicit, consistent, and accompanied by conditions that explain when a field is necessary.
- What Belongs in a Sensor Station Description?
A station description should let readers identify the instrument location and understand what, where, and under what conditions it measures.
- How Should a Change Log Describe a Breaking Change?
A useful breaking-change note names the old and new behavior, tells users what migration requires, and pins the change to a release or effective date.
- How Can a Protocol Example Be Made Easy to Verify?
A verifiable protocol example gives a complete exchange, states the conditions around it, and explains which response confirms the intended behavior.
- What Should an Operations Runbook Say About a Failed Refresh?
A refresh runbook should help an operator recognize the failure, collect safe evidence, restore service with bounded actions, and know who owns escalation.
- How Do You Document a Dashboard Metric?
A metric definition should expose the records and calculation behind the number, the time window and units used, and the limits on what it represents.
- Why Should Documentation Include a Data Dictionary?
A data dictionary gives each field a stable, precise meaning so that people and software can interpret records consistently across tools and versions.
- How Can You Document Local Time Behavior?
Explain which clock a timestamp uses, how daylight-saving transitions affect it, and how overnight schedules are represented.
- What Is a Useful Documentation Exercise for a New Contributor?
Use one setup instruction as a small reproducible test: start clean, follow it literally, and report the first missing step.
- How Should a Tool Document Its Exit Codes?
Define each meaningful exit status in terms of outcome, likely cause, and a useful next step.
- What Should a Download Page Explain About Freshness?
Separate the identity of a dataset from the times it was published, retrieved, and last successfully refreshed.
- How Can Documentation Avoid Unsupported Reliability Claims?
Describe what was measured, where the measurement stops, and what readers should infer from it.
- What Belongs in a Security Note for a Self-Hosted Service?
Help operators understand network exposure, secrets, updates, and recovery responsibilities before deploying a service.
- How Should a Project Document Configuration Precedence?
State how command-line options, environment variables, and files interact when the same setting appears more than once.
- What Makes an Example Configuration Safe to Publish?
Publish a useful configuration shape while replacing secrets, personal information, and machine-specific paths with explicit placeholders.
- How Can a Maintainer Document a Deprecation?
Make a deprecation actionable by naming the replacement, affected versions, timeline, and compatibility consequences.
- Why Should Documentation Link to a Specification Version?
Pin the reference revision behind a data-format explanation so readers can check the exact field definitions and changes.
- How Do You Document a Data Transformation?
Make every conversion traceable by naming inputs, steps, assumptions, and the fields that appear in the output.
- What Should an Incident Note Include for a Data Outage?
Give readers a concise account of what stopped arriving, when it happened, what state the service is in, and whether published records changed.
- How Can Documentation Explain an Uncertainty Range?
Define how endpoints are calculated and what the interval means before readers use it as a measure of confidence.
- What Is a Good Documentation Test for a Command Example?
Run a documented command from a clean state, then compare its real result with the text's stated outcome.
- How Should a Project Explain Its Scope to New Readers?
Orient new readers with the problem solved, supported inputs, intended audience, and explicit boundaries.
- How Can You Build a GTFS Service-Date Checker?
Build a small checker that resolves weekday service and date-specific exceptions, then lists the trips active on a chosen date.
- Can You Make a Command-Line Sensor CSV Summarizer?
A focused CSV tool can report the minimum, maximum, and number of usable readings while keeping missing data visible.
- How Would You Build a Stale-Data Badge?
A stale-data badge compares an observation timestamp with a chosen freshness limit and explains its status clearly.
- Can You Create a Schedule-Time Converter for Values Above 24 Hours?
Convert service-day clock notation into a timestamp by anchoring it to an explicitly supplied service date and time zone.
- How Can You Make a Tiny GTFS Feed Inspector?
An archive inspector can list files, check expected tables, count rows, and show headers without attempting full feed validation.