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by throwaway77384 990 days ago
The docs are soooooo bad. This is the same story with any exciting / new product.

Honestly, I'm beginning to think that we need some kind of documentation-first style development. Like TDD, but DDD....

I have integrated Facebook APIs, Instagram (well, same thing), Google APIs, Stripe APIs, Mailchimp APIs, etc. etc.

And the only thing common among all of them? The documentation is _terrible_..., like, _terrible_.

I also run a few products online and I spend so, so much time trying to get the documentation right. It's incredibly boring and tedious, but I really feel that if you want to set yourself apart from the big players, make good documentation. It can't be that hard.

2 comments

good documentation is the key to php's success along with a bunch of other things that get dismissed as "inferior technology".

The worst documentation are the jargon filled abstract vibes-based ones where the authors basically typed it with one hand on the keyboard. It's like "ok, you're amazing. Now how do I resolve this error and what are your command line flags?"

What do you think is missing in the docs?