Docs don't go stale like bread. They atrophy from disuse.

I always force the onboarding process to go through our docs, and I spend a little time with each new person observing their progress looking for regressions in the docs. You can't get that with old-timers because of the echo chamber/curse of knowledge effect.

This breaks down when you have a place that never hires new people. And rather than thinking that's a flaw in my process, I'm starting to think that's a flaw in the business itself. Without fresh ideas and feedback a project stagnates.

Depending on the nature of your memory and thought process, the insights gained from potentially-false statements in the documentation when they are true might be outweighed by the blind alleys and misunderstandings generated when they are false. You'd have to be very good at remembering where things came from and tagging them with their level of certainty. An important skill! But not a trivial one.

> You'd have to be very good at remembering where things came from and tagging them with their level of certainty.

I wonder why not more people do this? Not just for code, but for everything. I remember where I learned everything I know, I don't trust anything unless I remember the source. How do other people think, do they think that whatever pops up in their head is the truth without any source? Then how do they know it is a fact and not just a hunch or a guess?

It would be neat if your code editor could easily highlight the code newer than the comment(s) and tests based on your git history (without jumping out of your work, of course). Even something as simple as "highlight all code newer than the current line", for example, would be quite useful.