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> So instead you end up on 3rd party tutorials...How do you know if the feature changed significantly in the more recent release? I don’t know, but I can tell y
by ProAm 6y ago
> So instead you end up on 3rd party tutorials...How do you know if the feature changed significantly in the more recent release? I don’t know, but I can tell you where you won’t find out: the official docs.
Get ready for documentation subscriptions. I wish I were joking.
- mrtksn 6y agoThat actually sounds good. When you pay for something it implies that you might stop paying for the thing if you’re not happy which means the seller is likely to work hard to make you happy. I would love to have paid version of most of the apps/sites I use. Not ad-free subscription but paid version where I can be the unhappy customer when I am unhappy.
- grp000 6y agoThat would make sense if documentation were a standalone product, but it's completely complementary to the language, so that doesn't make any sense.
- Ronsenshi 6y agoAlready a thing: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/a-companion-for-swiftui/id1485436674?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/a-companion-for-swiftui/id1485... No affiliation. It's sad and a bit pathetic that trillion dollar company can't hire even one person to work on public documentation.
- doyouevensunbro 6y agoIt’s because engineers don’t want to write documentation, and if you don’t force it this is the result.
- piva00 6y agoA trillion dollar company should be able to hire some technical writers to embed into teams and write documentation as part of the process. It's just a lack of care when you have that amount of money.
- ethbr0 6y agoJust hire Microsoft's people. Not even joking. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.string.substring?view=net-5.0 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.string.su...
- jjkaczor 6y agoFor all the crap that Apple, Java and other open-source people have piled on Microsoft over the years, their developer documentation has always been very good. Yes, there are rough-edges. Back in the day, when Sun was still in-charge of Java, I had my 1-person consulting company partner with Sun and become an official "Certified Java" organization... Great, I thought - now I can get some better documentation... Sure, Sun replied - but first you have to buy a $30,000 server... Thankfully, .NET hit public beta about then and I have never looked back.
- wlesieutre 6y agoThere's an old saying at Microsoft: developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers
- ethbr0 6y agoIt's mocked, but the underlying observation is astute. In the personal computing world, first parties can't build enough user software. Furthermore, software availability and reliability lag third party developer and development ecosystem health. A bad experience doesn't hurt the platform today, it hurts the platform in 1+ years. And perhaps even worse, steps to address it take effect over a 1+ year timeframe as well. Apple's been able to leverage iOS market share into papering over the desktop reality, but they're going to find the emperor has no clothes real quickly if anything about that calculus shifts in a bad way.
- jonhendry18 6y agoApple used to be better about developers, I think, back 2000-2010 or so.
- dgritsko 6y agoI don't think this truism actually holds weight. Some engineers don't want to write documentation, sure. Maybe even most don't - but some actually do enjoy the process of writing good documentation, and they find satisfaction in creating knowledge artifacts that make their code easy to understand and use. It's not enough to just find these engineers, however - they need organizational support so that they have the right tools to create and share good documentation, and are appropriately encouraged to do so.
- jonhendry18 6y agoYou have to give them time to write it, too.
- RockmanZero 6y agowrong! bad engineers don’t want to write documentation
- SilasX 6y agoReminds me -- it used to be that I could plug my Macbook air into a monitor and arrange my windows, and it would return them to that position whenever I'd disconnect and come back. That feature vanished as of ~2018 and you have to buy some app to get it back.
- tidbits 6y agoMy Macbook pro still does this. Granted, it's a little wonky. If you alter the window in any way while disconnected then it might not return to the original location. It also doesn't preserve any new desktop environments created on the external display.
- alblue 6y agoThey actually have a department to write the documentation. The problem is that it’s a separate department from the people who design the libraries themselves, which means instead of having high quality documentation throughout, you only get the documentation that the doc team had time to write. It’s why most of the APIs are minimal at best in terms of documents. While the level of documentation that exists is usually pretty good, the sad fact is that most documentation doesn’t exist, and it’s entirely due to the fact that they are handled by developers/documentors separately. If you had developers documenting in-situ in the code, instead of WWDC slides, then it would be a lot better.
- munificent 6y ago> Get ready for documentation subscriptions. MSDN Library. Everything old is new again.
- qayxc 6y agoThat's a bogus claim! The MSDN documentation has always been freely available. The subscription service included all of Microsoft's software editions for development purposes and that's what subscribers actually paid for. The documentation of software packages, APIs, and driver kits was freely available online.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> The MSDN documentation has always been freely available No, it hasn't. It was originally available exclusively to subscribers, and only on CD. MSDN started before the web existed. Eventually, the documentation became free on the web.
- throwaways885 6y agoThat's a bit unfair. The web is what made it easy to publish at no cost, CD's still had mail and print costs associated so it made sense to send documentation with the software packages it... documented.
- dragonwriter 6y agoWhat's unfair? It's an accurate actual description with no value judgement. You seem to be arguing against a negative value judgement which I did not make, or even suggest.
- bluGill 6y agoPerhaps, but they didn't charge $3 for the CD, which is about the incremental cost of making a copy and mailing it out would be.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jonhendry18 6y ago>Get ready for documentation subscriptions. I wish I were joking I thought that was what the $99/year was for.