Finding a good sdk is hard.
Finding a well documented one is harder. Would love to see what you consider as the golden standard for documenting sdks!
Ask HN: What's the best SDK documentation you’ve ever read?
1–10 of 51 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the best SDK documentation you’ve ever read?
#2Use openapi and many of the documentation generators will create great reference pages.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best SDK documentation you’ve ever read?
#3I know there are lot of hate for Java but I find Java Doc very complete and helpful.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best SDK documentation you’ve ever read?
#4Not related to sdk but i Remember the hlp of visual basic like One of the best docs ever
edit: because of the code snippets
Re: Ask HN: What's the best SDK documentation you’ve ever read?
#5The Android SDK is well documented with examples throughout and hyperlinked to examples and posts which explain some content in greater depth.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best SDK documentation you’ve ever read?
#6I don't have a view on SDK documentation but the best API documentation I've read is the Win32 docs.
Why? They are comprehensive, detailed, consistent, systematically presented, clearly explained and professionally written. Microsoft documentation has sadly gone steeply downhill since.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best SDK documentation you’ve ever read?
#7For C and C++: cppreference.com. Why?
- Very good overview pages.
- Everything is cross-referenced.
- Almost everything comes with an example of how to use it.
- It's a wiki, so you can edit it yourself if you find anything lacking.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best SDK documentation you’ve ever read?
#8I think the documentation for Vue is pretty good.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best SDK documentation you’ve ever read?
#9I know there are lot of hate for Java but I find Java Doc very complete and helpful.
Java docs are great because they document:
* technical details and algorithms used
* side effects
* runtime and memory usage
* inputs that result in undefined behavior
* causes of exceptions
* behavior when accessed concurrently
* thoroughly hyperlinked
It's been this way for decades and the presentstion has remained largely consistent the whole time.
Re: Ask HN: What's the best SDK documentation you’ve ever read?
#10The Android SDK is well documented with examples throughout and hyperlinked to examples and posts which explain some content in greater depth.
Did they improve it recently ? I haven’t developed for Android in a while but it used to be terrible. Full of absolutely useless method descriptions.
For example, I remember getting frustrated because of the docs for a setTextSize method, with the helpful description “sets the text size”. Nice. Very helpful that it didn’t mention what unit the parameter was, especially since (after experimentation) it turns out the unit is not the one you would expect for a font size.
The API docs were full of that kind of ‘documentation’, setX: “Sets X”.
If you are writing documentation, please explain what method parameters and return values actually mean, what the units used are. Especially if uses a unit no one expects. For example: font sizes are usually specified in points, if you expect them to be specified in pixels you should absolutely mention that.