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Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

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Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#11
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Calling out other people's work as 'garbage' is pretty shameful Apple is not a people. Apple is a TRILLION dollar megacorp. They can afford more.

Yeah... but you do know that Apple is comprised of actual real people like you and me though, right?

And the author acknowledges that those individuals are not the problem.

> the problem is not individual engineers — who are not responsible for writing docs; that is the responsibility of dedicated coumentation teams. But that does not make it any less a failure of Apple’s engineering organization.

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#12
post #7

I am sure all the documentation this guy has ever written has been 100% perfect. /s Calling out other people's work as 'garbage' is pretty shameful. In my experience Apple's documentation is some of the best around. They have sample projects showing you how APIs work, good integration into their IDE, and lots of talks on video about their APIs given by the very engineers that built the thing. Not even to mention thei…

One doesn't need to write perfect documentation to point out bad documentation. That said, I was hoping for more concrete examples.

> One doesn't need to write perfect documentation to point out bad documentation.

Agreed. Calling something 'garbage' and providing no concrete examples isn't really constructive feedback. It is just name calling.

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#13

> Apple, if you want developers to love your platform — and you should, because good developers are your lifeblood — and if you don’t want them to flee for other platforms — and you should be worried about that, because the web is everywhere and Microsoft is coming for you — then you need to take this seriously. Adopt the mentality that has served other frameworks and languages so well: If it isn’t documented, it isn…

Look, this is just going to fall on deaf ears. Apple isn't listening. Their machine is output only.

That's not really true. Apple is active on Twitter and actively reaches out to correct problems.

For example, when I complained that their Xcode beta hangs when you open a large file, an Xcode dev reached out to me and asked for a repro case. https://twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1175197286349119490

(I'm not an Apple fanboy, just a dev.)

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#14

I am sure all the documentation this guy has ever written has been 100% perfect. /s Calling out other people's work as 'garbage' is pretty shameful. In my experience Apple's documentation is some of the best around. They have sample projects showing you how APIs work, good integration into their IDE, and lots of talks on video about their APIs given by the very engineers that built the thing. Not even to mention thei…

The main point here is that a lot of documentation is straight up missing.

Some of the code samples/sample projects also regularly break. I wonder if Apple has any automation around that.

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#15

I am sure all the documentation this guy has ever written has been 100% perfect. /s Calling out other people's work as 'garbage' is pretty shameful. In my experience Apple's documentation is some of the best around. They have sample projects showing you how APIs work, good integration into their IDE, and lots of talks on video about their APIs given by the very engineers that built the thing. Not even to mention thei…

I don't know much about Apple developer documentation but I disagree with your comment.

The following is a quote form the article

> Given what I know of Apple’s approach to this, the problem is not individual engineers — who are not responsible for writing docs; that is the responsibility of dedicated coumentation teams. But that does not make it any less a failure of Apple’s engineering organization. The job of an API engineering organization is to support those who will consume that API. I don’t doubt that many of Apples API engineers would love for all of these things to be documented. I likewise do not doubt that the documentation team is understaffed for the work they have to do. (If I’m wrong, if I should doubt that, because Apple’s engineering culture doesn’t value this, then that’s even worse an indictment of the engineering culture.) This kind of thing has to change at the level of the entire engineering organization.

It would be shameful if the author were calling out a particular person, because we do not know anything about any particular person who worked on these docs, what state they were in before that person got there, and what road blocks they might have.

However, it is not shameful at all to call out Apple as a company. The assumption is that if any company in the world has the resources to make their documentation amazing, it is Apple. The failure is not that of the people working on the documentation, it is that of the company as a whole.

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#17
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Calling out other people's work as 'garbage' is pretty shameful Apple is not a people. Apple is a TRILLION dollar megacorp. They can afford more.

Yeah... but you do know that Apple is comprised of actual real people like you and me though, right?

Should all corporations be above criticism because they're all made of people?

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#18
A couple years ago, maybe around Swift's debut, Apple began to mark all their sample code, projects, programming guides, technical notes, etc, as deprecated and unmaintained with a header on each page stating so, and putting it all in their "Documentation Archive" [0]

They've had a new push to make sure that the remaining official documentation is available in either Swift or Objective-C, but I have yet to see any attempt at migrating some of their best documentation: CoreBluetooth Programming Guide, CoreImage Programming Guide, or CoreData Programming Guide [1]. These are hugely helpful documents that take a much higher level approach than just API documentation and get to the heart of the design of a framework, with helpful diagrams, etc.

I understand that Apple has a huge body of work regarding documentation, and that it would be unfair for us to require them to never deprecate any of their documentation, but at this point, we basically have header files, documents automatically generated by header files, with several large swatch of that even being undocumented [2].

I do think that Apple made a huge effort with SwiftUI to provide meaningful, helpful documentation at the time of the announcement [3], and I don't want that to get lost in the discussion. Unfortunately the framework has iterated so quickly that much of it is out of date.

However, when Xamarin [4] independently documents some of Apple's APIs better than Apple does... it is indeed time for a call to action.

This is especially sad because Apple used to have some of the best documentation ever available. I basically learned how to program through using their documentation.

[0] - https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/navigation/

[1] - https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Co...

[2] - https://nooverviewavailable.com

[3] - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/swiftui

[4] - https://twitter.com/akashivskyy/status/1187790245804367873

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#19
post #5

Apple's developer docs have been incomplete since the introduction of OS X. I don't expect it to get any better before hell freezes over. The article mentions that this makes it hard for newbies to learn. That's true but my guess is that by the time those chickens come home to roost, JavaScript will be called a systems programming language. Edit: Updated wording to article's title change.

I wouldn’t put it quite as strongly as that, but yes, the OS X docs have never been great.

It’s a shame, because the classic MacOS docs were amazing, amongst the best technical docs of all time at their peak. (I had a shelf of Inside Mac books, and they were useful for years.)

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#20
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Calling out other people's work as 'garbage' is pretty shameful Apple is not a people. Apple is a TRILLION dollar megacorp. They can afford more.

Yeah... but you do know that Apple is comprised of actual real people like you and me though, right?

and i’m sure those people are competent enough to notice that their documentation is below average.

Sometimes having people critize « your » work in public helps you convice your manager’s manager something needs more care.

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