AI technical writers are here!

[Martin Eden]

Hello guys,

This night I've discovered AI site that provides structured
documentation generation for guthub repos. I've tested it a
bit on three repositories and quite impressed in results.


1. Lua's repo

https://deepwiki.com/lua/lua

I have general understanding how Lua internally done but
generated docs and graphs provide nice high-scope modules
overview with links to code.


2. Lua code formatter

https://deepwiki.com/martin-eden/lua_code_formatter

I wrote it like 9 years ago and not maintaining it.
Code organization is not orthodoxal, personal grammar parser,
AST transformer, formatter and text printer. I did my best
when was writing it but documented that times a lot less.

Generated documentation is structured sufficiently complete.


3. Lua code melder

https://deepwiki.com/martin-eden/lua_code_melder

Again, it's mine code I wrote relatively recently. Lot more simple.

Generated documentation is unnecessary complex. Mainly because
code contains parts from my personal framework which are not
central part of program.


Conclusion

Choosing meaningful names, writing comments and documenting
parts even in small files pays off. Generated documentation
is in parts are more useful than "stock" documentation.

-- Martin

[Родион Горковенко]

The subtle issue with AI-generated documentation is that it is not reliable.

Unless the tool has explicit control allowing user to prevent it from going delirious when data are insufficient it may

sometimes lead to unpleasant consequences.

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[Sainan]

I'm so fucking tired of this. AI still either just copies text that was already there (maybe rephrashing it a little) or it just straight-up hallcuinates. It had the same problems when it was first introduced over 2 years ago. Why is no one learning this?

-- Sainan

[Martin Eden]

On 2025-11-29 10:17, 'Sainan' via lua-l wrote:
> I'm so fucking tired of this. AI still either just copies text that was already there (maybe rephrashing it a little) or it just straight-up hallcuinates. It had the same problems when it was first introduced over 2 years ago. Why is no one learning this?
>
> -- Sainan
>

Well maybe.

I expect some people here have sufficient expertise in Lua internals
(looking at you Roberto!)  to compare computer-generated text with
their vision. And make their opinions.

Also that's why I used two repos in test that are completely mine
and mostly unknown.

Scope of documentation is biased based on available code files and
related text. So yeah, not like we humans really like to perceive it.

Also we can test what will happen when documentation contradicts
code. But I'm too lazy for this.

And even so, just text snippets, AI text stitcher, callgraph generator
in Python and `gv` called from some Bash script produce result parts of
which I would like to borrow. (Mostly because English is not my native
language.) And that's mass media, not some script at half-dead
university's site.

-- Martin

[Augusto Goulart]

No LLMs please. I’ve got an “Awesome No-LLM” repo and would be very sad to add Lua to the “Do not trust” section.

Regarding AI-generated documentation, I think that’s worse than generated code because you can test code, with documentation you’ll have to proofread it, and even then — like you said — the code used to generate it might not reflect its intended purpose from a system-wide view.

Just a thought,

Augusto

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[bil til]

I think it might be nice to complete "small tasks", which are not
really new but somehow near to some standard, so more adaptions to a
special application.

But not the planning ... and the planning is most important for
programming. There must be some people who set define the "golden
thread" in a software project, this could never be AI, as this is
typically a very unique work.

If in such a project a mass of programmers is adapting software to
this application, and that application, and expecially if there are
lots of such "more boring subtasks", then AI might be useful.. .
Typically you might see this in very large software projects (which I
myself am NOT expert for - I prefer to write all critcial software
parts by myself...).

Real testing of a NEW software system you can only do if you clearly
know the "golden thread" of an idea / of a project / of the
motivation.. .

E. g. for documentation: AI is quite perfect meanwhile for transation,
also in very different languages as Chinese, see deepl... the progress
here in the last 10 years is really extremely impressive. For any
"automation tasks" AI clearly will get better and better in
programming and also documention, I am quite sure.

Am Sa., 29. Nov. 2025 um 18:02 Uhr schrieb Augusto Goulart
<joseaugust...@gmail.com>:
>