Q: When asked to train your replacement, how much is too much to put into it?

I'm being kept around until the latest release goes into Beta (the limited public release and last chance for bug fixes before the program goes public for real). Until then, I sit around waiting for the testers to find something for me to fix. And then there's a project for which I'm supposed to come up with a front end, but nobody has any idea what the back end looks like: here, go build a house, we'll tell you where the plumbing and electrical connections are, as soon as we get around to designing them. That's stupid. Fuck that.

And, I'm getting ready to ... Train My Replacement(s). I suppose I should be bitter and resentful, but I'm not. Not terribly, anyway. Maybe a little, but only towards the offshore hired guns. Really, I'm just happy about doing it because a) I'll have something to do and b) it's one step closer to the start of my summer vacation.

This thing I'm to train them on is a fairly big application, which I wrote by myself over the course of three years. Nobody else here has even the slightest clue about how it does what it does. So I'm writing documents and diagrams that try to give a high-level view of the dozen different parts, which are spread across a half-dozen database and web servers, documenting some of the undocumented procedures and processes I use to make it all work, etc.. And I'm doing this documentation voluntarily.

I keep thinking to myself "Why the fuck am I doing this? Why shouldn't I just do a 30 minute tour, throw them the keys, and leave with a smirk?" I mean, aside from the fact that doing this gives me something to do, what's the downside for me to letting them figure it out for themselves? Clearly the company (big legal research company, name sounds like Toyota's high-end brand) doesn't care. My boss didn't ask me to do this. He thinks I can teach them this sprawling monster of an application in a couple of hours. Sure, I can teach them how to use it in a couple of hours. But they won't be using it, they'll be maintaining it.

Part of it, I think, is that I like some of the people who are going to have to take over this app. I've worked with them for years and I have the opportunity to help them avoid the frustration and desperation programmers usually feel when they have to pick up something that's undocumented and which nobody in the company has ever touched because That One Guy Who Knew It left six months ago. So, I can be the Guy Who Wrote It All Down; and based on my experience, I'll be the first programmer in the history of programming to do this; I expect an exhibit in the Programmer's Hall Of Fame. That's worth the effort, I guess.