Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#331

Post by kbenson » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 11:05 PM UTC

x0x0 wrote: post #328

CharlesColeman wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The Symbian documentation team was tiny, perhaps 20 people at most. At an offsite we would pretty much fit round two tables at most. ... Source: I was there. > What's the purpose of the throwaway account for this? My guess is they want keep their other account pseudonymous, and admitting that they were one of a specific team of 20 people at a specific company goes a long way towards unambiguously identifying them.…

I'm not the person, but I had an HN leaderboard member pitch a tantrum at me about a programming opinion on here, and imply that my opinions were representative of my employer. It's a good reason to stay pseudonymous.

Another good reason, and a good reminder that popularity, status and/or power does not automatically rid a person of the human foibles that plague us all.

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#332

Post by saagarjha » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 11:06 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #313

throwaway_symb wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Symbian documentation team was tiny, perhaps 20 people at most. At an offsite we would pretty much fit round two tables at most. As always you get what you pay for. Even so the Symbian team did some pretty cool things such as creating open source documentation standards for C++ and the tools to support that. Source: I was there.

Honest question: What's the purpose of the throwaway account for this? Is there some blow-back that you expect from this? Is there some NDA that precludes you from even talking about it years later? Do you think it reflects negatively on your years later?

In addition to the other reasons mentioned here, they might not want to be known as a person who leaks things under NDA to future employers.

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#333

Post by gatherhunterer » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 11:08 PM UTC

computerex wrote: post #329

gatherhunterer wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You criticize their rabid fans but aren’t you just as irrational? You have made claims that are so bizarre they cannot be supported by evidence. You are making emotional attacks that sound like someone talking about their high school bully. I don’t know how you convinced yourself that Apple is more interested in being aloof than in making changes that would help them make money but that belief is just as ridiculous a…

https://www.engadget.com/2010/06/24/apple-responds-over-ipho... https://9to5mac.com/2019/02/11/italian-apple-homepage-to-add... https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/28/16827248/apple-iphone-ba... https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3032188/apple-face... These is just a very small subset of incidents with Apple where Apple failed to right their wrongs and was ultimately forced to do so by public and or legal pressur…

Your point being? I said nothing that is contradicted by your comment.

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#334

Post by TheKarateKid » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 11:15 PM UTC

I’m surprised no one has complained about the lack of documentation for Safari, especially on iOS where special behavior is done for mobile.

The best I could find from Apple was several years old, and clearly not up to date as the behavior no longer functioned as documented.

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#335

Post by saagarjha » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 11:22 PM UTC

russellbeattie wrote: post #219

Every once in a while I think to myself, "I have a problem with OSX, I think I'll try to automate it with JavaScript for Automation (JXA)..." You know the rest. The astounding lack of documentation is almost amusing. It becomes an adventure of trying to convert old AppleScript examples into JS, spelunking into GitHub and StackOverflow and general trial and error until I get something to work. All this said, I'd rathe…

Nobody seems to use JXA, unlike some of the technologies that are heavily used but just as undocumented :(

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#336

Post by fnord123 » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 11:29 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #282

fnord123 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You need to know the principle of a BST. Unless you're building a database working in a unique scenario, actually traversing it going to be done by some library. Looks like you got stung by the confusion between binary tree and B-Tree (and B+Trees). 1. The b in btree isn't binary. 2. Databases use B+Trees. 3. binary trees are almost worthless.

> 3. binary trees are almost worthless. Interval trees reduce to Binary Search Trees when the nodes can't overlap. Most markup DOMs (in browsers, WYSIWYG editors, etc.) are held as an Interval-tree ADT which is actually implemented by a BST. Also, Red-Black trees specifically are used in many database clients to implement an in-memory write-back cache of a database table, as the combination of performance requirement…

>Interval trees reduce to Binary Search Trees when the nodes can't overlap.

Interval trees are degenerate R-Trees which can be implemented using GiST which is itself a btree.

>Also, Red-Black trees specifically are used in many database clients to implement an in-memory write-back cache of a database table, as the combination of performance requirements for flushing batches of writes to the DB, and reading back arbitrary keys that were written to the cache, make these BSTs nearly optimal for this use-case.

Got a source? I'd like to read up on this use case.

>But yes, DBMSes themselves don't tend to use BSTs for much. Maybe as a query-plan-AST term-rewriting-phase ADT.

Postgres' source does indeed have a red black tree in it:

https://doxygen.postgresql.org/structRBTree.html

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#337

Post by zamalek » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 11:38 PM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #291

zamalek wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A binary tree is plausibly something a candidate would know, or could figure out without communicating at all. Apple picked possibly the worst problem if what you are describing was their goal, the ideal problem would be something that is unlikely to be known by any candidate. If their goal was to determine if the candidate could actually code, a binary tree probably asks too much (the ideal real-world solution is li…

I disagree. Expecting people to invent novel data structures on the fly, under stress, is unreasonable. Usually the idea is to ask a question they haven't actually seen, but is still somehow solvable using basic data structures most people learned in school, maybe with a minor tweak for the problem. Otherwise, it's unlikely that most people will be able to solve it in 45 minutes, even with hints, and then you don't l…

> Expecting people to invent novel data structures on the fly, under stress, is unreasonable.

If that's the metric being measured, then sure, it's a bad idea.

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#338

Post by russellbeattie » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 11:47 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #335

russellbeattie wrote: post #219

Every once in a while I think to myself, "I have a problem with OSX, I think I'll try to automate it with JavaScript for Automation (JXA)..." You know the rest. The astounding lack of documentation is almost amusing. It becomes an adventure of trying to convert old AppleScript examples into JS, spelunking into GitHub and StackOverflow and general trial and error until I get something to work. All this said, I'd rathe…

Nobody seems to use JXA, unlike some of the technologies that are heavily used but just as undocumented :(

I don't disagree, but you might be confusing the chicken and egg. Maybe if Apple actually documented JXA... (it's actually quite useful).

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#339

Post by pier25 » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 11:48 PM UTC

TheKarateKid wrote: post #334

I’m surprised no one has complained about the lack of documentation for Safari, especially on iOS where special behavior is done for mobile. The best I could find from Apple was several years old, and clearly not up to date as the behavior no longer functioned as documented.

Indeed.

Stuff like the strange behaviour of on iOS is not documented anywhere but StackOverflow or WebKit's bugzilla.

For those that don't know, you can't set the height and width of an on iOS. Something which has been possible in all browsers since the tag exists.

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#340

Post by pier25 » Mon, Oct 28, 2019, 11:58 PM UTC

tempodox wrote: 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.

Trying to learn Cocoa dev in 2019 is very frustrating.

Not only there are practically no updated resources available (books, courses, etc), but the Apple docs are really lackluster.

At first I thought Catalyst was about empowering Cocoa devs to bring Mac apps into iOS, but now I see it's just the opposite. I imagine the number of macOS devs has been slowly shrinking over the years.