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On Apple's Piss-Poor Documentation

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Re: On Apple's Piss-Poor Documentation

#271
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concur. PHP is a horrible language, but I don't hate working in it. The documentation is the reason.

I concur and add that PHP has actually evolved quite nicely, and it's horribleness is merely an outdated meme. Java is still playing catchup to the stuff PHP has added in recent years. Just because it was shit 15 years ago doesn't mean it's still shit now.

is the PHP standard library still an inconsistent mess?

Re: On Apple's Piss-Poor Documentation

#275
An example of this that I noticed just recently:

Here's the doc for a deprecated `launch` method of `Process`: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/process....

It's deprecated, and there's no note on what the replacement should be. Xcode, however, has a hint to use the `run` method. This isn't documented anywhere. If I don't use Xcode, I wouldn't know about this replacement.

And here's the replacement document for `run`: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/process....

"No overview available".

This is beyond embarrassing.

Re: On Apple's Piss-Poor Documentation

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean you can't figure things out from "public Session getSession(String, String, String, String, String)"?

On the SwiftUI side, you might go digging in these docs for Previews, which are one of its biggest selling points: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui/previews Take 30 seconds to read through that and the linked pages (that's all the time it will take) and see if you could figure out how to use a PreviewDevice to make your preview show a particular device. It will tell you all the ways to initialize a P…

found something! kinda: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui/previewpro...

an example for `PreviewProvider#previews` uses `.previewDevice("iPhone X")`, and i'm guessing that that string gets turned into a `PreviewDevice` via one of those `fromBlahLiteral` methods it implements? my guess is that `PreviewDevice` is some kind of opaque handle thingy (which is why it has no visible members/methods) but that... really should be documented

Re: On Apple's Piss-Poor Documentation

#277
Say what you want about the npm ecosystem, but I've found that the most popular libraries to solve a particular problem are almost always the ones with the best documentation. It's natural selection: the ones that are easier to install/use get installed/used more often.

It's to the point where I expect good documentation, and will pretty quickly discard a library if the docs don't look robust on first inspection.

It's sort of bizarre to me that Apple doesn't know this, or at least hasn't acted on it.

Re: On Apple's Piss-Poor Documentation

#278
post #277

Say what you want about the npm ecosystem, but I've found that the most popular libraries to solve a particular problem are almost always the ones with the best documentation. It's natural selection: the ones that are easier to install/use get installed/used more often. It's to the point where I expect good documentation, and will pretty quickly discard a library if the docs don't look robust on first inspection. It'…

I think they know it's bad, they just don't need to make it better because its their OS so they're the only game in town. Developer experience isn't why people write apps for mac/iOS, so there's not much incentive for them to invest in it.

Re: On Apple's Piss-Poor Documentation

#279
post #153

Look at the Elixir and Phoenix Framework if you want to see how documentation should be done. Guides and introduction : https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/introduction.html Elixir reference doc: https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/Map.html Phoenix reference doc: https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/Phoenix.Controller.html

Big +1. Those docs are a big reason I found Phoenix to be so fun -- all my beginner questions were stupid easy to answer, and my more intermediate questions had guides and links to further study in the official docs.

Re: On Apple's Piss-Poor Documentation

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple figures developers will still pay them $99/year even if they provide them with poor documentation, and unfortunately, it looks like they're right.

Microsoft: Developers! Developers! Developers! Apple: Fuck off Developers!

Apple: There's no official documentation for this, but here's a haughty forum response from an unaffiliated volunteer sycophant directing you to the extant superficially-related documentation.
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