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I've not used Elixir, but I'm surprised by the strong dislike for GoDoc. I've used Java, C#, C/C++, Python, and JavaScript and I've never found anything to be a
by weberc2 8y ago
I've not used Elixir, but I'm surprised by the strong dislike for GoDoc. I've used Java, C#, C/C++, Python, and JavaScript and I've never found anything to be as nice as GoDoc.
In particular, Godoc is absolutely effortless. No build step in your project, no cryptic documentation syntax, no need to tell the documentation generator how to link to your dependencies' documentation pages, etc. Everything just works, and the output is quite a lot cleaner than the aforementioned as well.
No doubt there's a little room for improvement in how the text is layed out and organized, but it's still leagues better than all other documentation systems I've used. With Python (sphinxdocs) in particular, everything gets rendered into a giant page with no clues about what class's `__str__()` method I'm currently looking at.
- 013a 8y agoThat's mostly what I mean. I love godoc and the philosophy behind it; its a massive improvement over the manual documentation build steps of Java, JS, Python, etc. But even more modern languages, like Rust and Elixir, do it better. There's a lot of low-hanging UX and usability fruit to be fixed in godoc which can make the experience better.
- weberc2 8y agoAh, I see. I guess I think of these UX improvements as “the last mile”, and it’s nice to have something that gets us 95% of the way there compared to everything else that makes you work to get to 40%. Also, i’ve never found Rust’s docs to be very easy to read; maybe the complexity of the type system makes for a more challenging UX, or maybe my opinion is simply an outlier. In any case, it’s good to know things can get even better. Thanks for sharing!