What is documentation?

• A. information about a program's code
• B. the live runtime state of a program
• C. the hardware requirements for a program
• D. the user interface design of a program

Answer: (A)

Documentation is information about a program's code—descriptions of what the code does, how it’s organized, what interfaces it exposes, and how to use those interfaces. It often includes inline comments, API documentation, and guides like READMEs that explain functions, parameters, return values, and how different parts fit together. This kind of information helps someone reading or maintaining the code understand its structure and behavior without having to deduce everything from scratch.

That’s why it’s the best description here: it centers on describing the code itself and how to interact with it. The live runtime state of a program is what the program is doing while it runs, which changes over time and isn’t documentation. The hardware requirements describe the environment needed to run the program, not the code or its behavior. The user interface design covers how the program looks and interacts with users, which is about presentation rather than describing the code’s structure and usage.