The Challenge of Documenting Engineering Decision Rationale

Summary

The article discusses the challenge of documenting the reasoning behind engineering decisions, not just the technical implementation. It describes a scenario where a senior engineer spent three weeks trying to understand why certain architectural choices were made (like using Redis over in-memory cache, GraphQL vs REST, and specific exceptions in auth flows), with answers buried in closed pull requests. The piece highlights the importance of capturing decision rationale for better team understanding and onboarding efficiency.