> What was the barrier to creating these documents before?
In a proprietary system, there is pressure against creating quality technical documentation because it can be used to train your replacement. Writing docs solely for your own benefit, or your colleagues' benefit, is also dubious because you already know the things you wrote. Although returning to a thing you made months/years ago can be painful, it's not the day-to-day common case in enterprise software development.
AI assistants flip the incentives. Now, your docs are helping to steer your personal digital goblin in the right direction. The docs are tangibly augmenting your own abilities.
In a proprietary system, there is pressure against creating quality technical documentation because it can be used to train your replacement. Writing docs solely for your own benefit, or your colleagues' benefit, is also dubious because you already know the things you wrote. Although returning to a thing you made months/years ago can be painful, it's not the day-to-day common case in enterprise software development.
AI assistants flip the incentives. Now, your docs are helping to steer your personal digital goblin in the right direction. The docs are tangibly augmenting your own abilities.