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The unbearable frustration of figuring out APIs

blog.ar-ms.me

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Re: The unbearable frustration of figuring out APIs

#41

Post by ks2048 »

Salgat wrote: post #24

My biggest frustration with docs is when they don't provide examples. Seems like whenever examples are included, everything becomes much easier to understand because you have an explicit usage to reference. I've always loved Microsoft's API Browser for this reason: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.net.netw...

Not mentioned in the blog post, but he links to an Apple API documentation page, which itself links to a full sample app using Translation API,

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/translation/transl...

Re: The unbearable frustration of figuring out APIs

#42

Post by another_twist »

footy wrote: post #34

I don't understand why people who think like this get (or want to get) jobs as software developers It's clearly not enjoyable for them so why doesn't the author pivot to something else and stop doing things they hate? It's weird

Because the time investment isnt worth it most of the time. Unless its a widely used framework / library its worth no ones time to try and understand API docs, each and every component and then deal with some genius patterns thrown here and here. Its a skill that has low market value so sharpening it isnt worth it.

Re: The unbearable frustration of figuring out APIs

#43

Post by bfbf »

n8cpdx wrote: post #17
marcellus23 wrote: post #12

All of this is written with a sense of anger and sarcastic invective that doesn't seem appropriate. This is part of learning any new language or API. Going in with an attitude of "I should already know how all this works, why am I forced to do research or look at docs?" seems unfair and will spoil the experience of learning anything. > Why was that so hard? Why are the models here separate from the ones in the right…

This is a story about the risks of AI-induced brainrot. You get so used to having the computer just do your work, that the second you need to engage your noggin you’re lost at sea. Or at least just frustrated. Reading and understanding the docs and reference material has always been part of the work. Aside from the commentary it read like an advertisement for how great the swift/macos translation APIs are. PEBCAK

Gotta say as a Swift dev I agree—followed the link the to Translate docs and was pleasantly surprised to see a discussion section clearly explaining the usage, which is not always the case for Apple APIs! But this wasn’t really just an article about the API. It was about the complexity of trying to build on the stack of Swift/SPM/ParseableCommand/Foundation/Concurrency/Translation without having a good grasp of any of them. I was frustrated reading it, but I think it does point to the underlying knowledge that’s needed to be proficient at something like this. None of it is a particular indictment of Swift as an ecosystem (though there are lots of valid criticisms)-it’s just the nature of development and something that’s massively eroded by relying too much on these ghosts

Re: The unbearable frustration of figuring out APIs

#44

Post by TeMPOraL »

Svoka wrote: post #3

This is strangest read I had in a while. It is like saying that operating a submarine is very counter intuitive, I know how to operate an airliner, both are vehicles.

More like, operating a submarine that's being designed and built-up around you as you travel in it, with half the components being obscure military secrets that - for reasons unknown - don't come with operator manuals anymore, and the other half being done by children copying designs they saw in TV shows with duct-tape and plasticine.

That's how modern software industry feels like.

Re: The unbearable frustration of figuring out APIs

#46

Post by epgui »

another_twist wrote: post #40
marcellus23 wrote: post #12

All of this is written with a sense of anger and sarcastic invective that doesn't seem appropriate. This is part of learning any new language or API. Going in with an attitude of "I should already know how all this works, why am I forced to do research or look at docs?" seems unfair and will spoil the experience of learning anything. > Why was that so hard? Why are the models here separate from the ones in the right…

Disagree here. APIs are meant for using and not learning. But the context matters here. For some paid system, there better be an API thats easy to use or I am throwing AI at the problem or hoping someone else will do it. If its something worth learning - say Guava data structures or RocksDb core - yup I'll invest the time to learn. That learning transfers over. But trying to learn some shitty AWS api and its nuances,…

Language is meant for using, not learning. Why is Arabic/French/Chinese/etc so difficult?

Re: The unbearable frustration of figuring out APIs

#47

Post by TeMPOraL »

saulpw wrote: post #9
lacoolj wrote: post #8

I'm really sorry, but when someone posts an entire article that they don't first proof-read at least once, it makes me question the rest of what I'm reading and can't continue. > ... I found mysekf launching TextEdit just to do that I hope everyone else enjoys it!

on the one hand, why didn't they just pump it through the "Ghost" and have it fix all the problems for them? on the other hand, I appreciated knowing that it was actually written by a frustrated human, and not sanitized by the Ghost.

That's the thing: if you ask the Ghost to write as if a frustrated human, it'll happily do so.

LLMs are good at style transfer in fully general sense, they can introduce typos and bad grammar just as easily as it can correct them.

Re: The unbearable frustration of figuring out APIs

#48

Post by saulpw »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #47
saulpw wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on the one hand, why didn't they just pump it through the "Ghost" and have it fix all the problems for them? on the other hand, I appreciated knowing that it was actually written by a frustrated human, and not sanitized by the Ghost.

That's the thing: if you ask the Ghost to write as if a frustrated human, it'll happily do so. LLMs are good at style transfer in fully general sense , they can introduce typos and bad grammar just as easily as it can correct them.

That's fine, and I know that, but I have never heard of anyone doing that to publish something 'more human' on their blog. Not to say that it's never happened, but when I see some pretty basic typos in a blog post that also sounds like actual human frustration, Occam's Razor says it's fair to assume that a human made those typos.

Re: The unbearable frustration of figuring out APIs

#49

Post by TeMPOraL »

saulpw wrote: post #48
TeMPOraL wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing: if you ask the Ghost to write as if a frustrated human, it'll happily do so. LLMs are good at style transfer in fully general sense , they can introduce typos and bad grammar just as easily as it can correct them.

That's fine, and I know that, but I have never heard of anyone doing that to publish something 'more human' on their blog. Not to say that it's never happened, but when I see some pretty basic typos in a blog post that also sounds like actual human frustration, Occam's Razor says it's fair to assume that a human made those typos.

I've seen non-tech people doing that both by hand and automatically, specifically to make the e-mails and documents look human-authored. I'm convinced this is a very common behavior.

Re: The unbearable frustration of figuring out APIs

#50

Post by joshstrange »

ks2048 wrote: post #41
Salgat wrote: post #24

My biggest frustration with docs is when they don't provide examples. Seems like whenever examples are included, everything becomes much easier to understand because you have an explicit usage to reference. I've always loved Microsoft's API Browser for this reason: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.net.netw...

Not mentioned in the blog post, but he links to an Apple API documentation page, which itself links to a full sample app using Translation API, https://developer.apple.com/documentation/translation/transl...

To be fair, Apple is known for having bad docs (for at least the past 5-10 years) that often don’t have examples or sample code, I think that’s more of an outlier.

I don’t regularly develop in swift, but when I have, I’ve been confused by the docs because they are so clearly auto generated (not LLM, just from the code) and sparse. Listing out constants is next to useless when they are confusingly named and have no description of what they mean or how the affect things.

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