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> I suspect that the presentations and diagrams which need to be made, are made.

I don't think that's true.

E.g. diagrams are made, once, because of an audit, instead of made iteratively as the software changes.

Or someone says, "If they want to know, they can just talk to me. You know, have a conversation?"

The whole "yeah, just have a conversation" thing bugs me a lot. I like talking, and having conversations. It's rarely enough. The information needs to be written down (or codified in tests or whatever). Future people won't have the luxury of a conversation with whoever originally wrote something. Conversations aren't indexable. Conversations lose nuance, memories fade or get jumbled. Have your conversation, then document/diagram it afterwards.

Plus, conversations are synchronous. If it's just one person explaining to another, it's no so bad. But what if that person needs to explain it to five or ten people? Do you have multiple 1:1 conversations or try to schedule a meeting at a time everyone is available?

And it's like talking about code and coding. Once you start writing you find all^W a lot of assumptions/hypotheses you made implicitly or even flaws in your reasoning.

Writing is nature's way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is.

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