Document Everything

I just spent more time than I should have troubleshooting a problem with a custom-coded application. 

The problem itself could have been resovled in a matter of minutes if the person who'd coded the application were at work today.  Naturally, he wasn't.

I could have figured it out fairly quickly had the developer commented his code.  He didn't.

Having someone in-house who can code custom apps is great.  Until that person goes away.  This is the second time recently I've been through this process.  The last time I had to walk through thousands of lines of code to fix a client-facing web-enabled application.  Talk about being under the gun!  The developer who'd coded the app was long gone, and not one single bit of documentation was available.

I sometimes think my quasi-obsessive documentation of everything I do is a waste of time.  Until I really run into time wasted by the lack of documentation.