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50% of the questions on Stack Overflow are probably because the documentation was not great in the first place. I am surprised how much configuration/installati
by MattGaiser 5y ago
50% of the questions on Stack Overflow are probably because the documentation was not great in the first place. I am surprised how much configuration/installation time I spend on there.
- handrous 5y agoSomething that bugs the hell out of me is any file-location or file-name configuration-by-convention thing where every example doesn't clearly state WTF file it's supposed to go in and link to a full example to provide any necessary context. "Gee, I guess I'll scan the whole page... nope, not anywhere on this page, now I get to click around your docs menu trying to figure out where this goes. Thanks." Half the time I end up poking around on GitHub trying to find a project that uses it, so I can figure out where it goes.
- hardwaresofton 5y agoIf Stack Overflow ever changes their model/tries too hard to monetize, the resulting chaos will be bad initially, but will probably spur a shift to better documentation across the board. SO serves as unofficial documentation for a lot of projects and once that crutch is gone, it will force projects to either improve or (more likely) stop letting people file issues (because that's where all the stuff would go). Looks like GitHub is already getting ahead of this with the "Discussions" feature.
- antonvs 5y ago> If Stack Overflow ever changes their model/tries too hard to monetize On that subject, Stack Overflow was just acquired for $1.8 billion.
- hardwaresofton 5y agoYeah, I made this comment with that thought in mind! For all of SO's history I think it's safe to say they've been very generous (i.e. cognizant of what their platform offers/the potential risks of monetization in certain ways). For what it's worth, I don't think Prosus will make a mistake in this way -- the fact that they've existed all this time without me (or most people, I think) ever hearing about them means that they are good at what they do. Regardless of what their main goals are, I assume that I'll think it's likely I continue to not hear about them.
- dataflow 5y ago> the documentation was not great in the first place or a pain to find when searching online in the first place...
- an_opabinia 5y agoSomeone who solves problems by Googling is a good customer. Someone who needs handholding or is unsophisticated is a bad customer. For developer tools and such, an educated person’s game, the sophisticated players will have better LTV than the unsophisticated ones.
- MattGaiser 5y agoThe problem with many more niche things is that it hasn't gotten to the point where decent answers have accumulated on Google. I recently had to build a Word Add-In. Not a lot of those built at the moment. So we were dependent on the documentation, which while reasonably comprehensive, had some frustrating gaps in just getting the tutorial code running that took days to resolve.
- aspaviento 5y agoOfficeJS Add-In or the old one?
- MattGaiser 5y agoThe new OfficeJS one. Try running the Angular tutorial in a desktop version of Word, which uses Legacy Edge/IE 11 as its runtime or at least did when we were doing this. It won't work.
- sidlls 5y agoA company that provides documentation that is complete and easy to use is a good company. A company selling a product that requires the customer to search third party documentation for usage is a bad company. For software tools, an educated customer is going to choose companies that have products that help solve their problems, not ones that add to them (in the form of more work to seek out out-of-band documentation).
- benchaney 5y agoBeing able to function without good documentation is not the same as thinking that it is a good idea. One is a useful skill, the other is idiocy.
- pjmlp 5y agoNot sure about the percentage but plenty are from people that don't even bother to read what is available or buy a book! They just do stack overflow driven programming, question & paste.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- EdwardDiego 5y agoOne of the first PRs I submit to a FOSS project I'm trying to contribute to, is usually their developer docs. It's only really new contributors to have to follow it and find all the undocumented assumptions.
- fuzzfactor 5y ago>If someone’s having to read your docs, it’s not “simple” If it's actually not a simple subject or process, don't shortcut on the documentation.
- cjvirtucio 5y agoIt's gotten to a point where if I run into an issue, my first instinct is to go to the source code instead of the docs.