Computer
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
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is said to have Internal Documentation if the notes on how and why various parts of code operate is included within the
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...
as comments. It is often combined with meaningful
variable
Variable may refer to:
* Variable (computer science), a symbolic name associated with a value and whose associated value may be changed
* Variable (mathematics), a symbol that represents a quantity in a mathematical expression, as used in many ...
names with the intention of providing potential future programmers a means of understanding the workings of the code.
This contrasts with external
documentation, where programmers keep their notes and explanations in a separate document.
Internal documentation has become increasingly popular as it cannot be lost, and any programmer working on the code is immediately made aware of its existence and has it readily available.
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Technical communication