On the SoftLayer blog today there's a new post with some recommendations for better code documentation - four tips to help make things clearer and cleaner.

Last month, Jeremy shared some valuable information regarding technical debt on SLDN. In his post, he discussed how omitting pertinent information when you're developing for a project can cause more work to build up in the future. One of the most common areas developers overlook when it comes to technical debt is documentation. This oversight comes in two forms: A complete omission of any documentation and inadequate information when documentation does exist. Simply documenting the functionality of your code is a great start, but the best way to close the information gap and avoid technical debt that stems from documentation (or lack thereof) is to follow four simple rules.

Their four recommendations cover several aspects of documentation:

• Know Your Audience
• Be Consistent - Terminology
• Forget What You Know About Your Code...But Only Temporarily
• Peer Review

They've also provided some examples of what they're talking about with PHPDocumentor-formatted comments.