Comment by throwaway2037

"Plus, I've found that forcing myself to write function documentation, and justify my decisions, has resulted in me putting more consideration into design."

This, this, and... this.

Sometimes, I step back after writing documentation and realise, this is a bunch of baloney. It could be much simpler, or this is a terrible decision! My point: Writing documentation is about expressing the function a second time -- the first time was code, the second time was natural language. Yeah, it's not a perfect 1:1 (see: the law in any developed country!), but it is a good heuristic.