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For better or worse, the one thing that I can say that is very positive about php, is php.net has basically great documentation and it's usually easy enough to

For better or worse, the one thing that I can say that is very positive about php, is php.net has basically great documentation and it's usually easy enough to find what you need about particular methods. If php didn't have the documentation that they do, it would not be as successful as it is.

alttag 13y ago
I think you're right, and there's a lesson here. I was recently evaluating a several options on github for a tool I needed. All options satisfied my basic requirements, so the choice came down to community/recency, and documentation. I went with the project that was better documented. Joke was on me, there had been several great feature updates, but without new documentation. So, please, I implore OS committers, as much as it may be a pain, please require documentation updates when accepting patches!
robertfw 13y ago
We switched from PHP to Python a few years back and the one thing I consistently miss is the documentation. I feel that PHP has far superior documentation in terms of clearly showing arguments, returns, examples etc.
- dspillett 13y ago
  It is how PHP survived (at least in the 4.x.x and early 5.x.x days when I last used it) the massively inconsistent "standard" library: the documentation reduced the effect of that problem considerably and made discovery of features relatively easy. A "good enough" system with excellent documentation is going to win out against a better system without the doc documentation to make library feature discovery and use easy. It'll be interesting to see how node.js develops in this regard. Currently the core documentation is pretty good there, but as the size of the project grows it'll take effort to maintain a certain standard and coverage.
- gcb1 13y ago
  yep. but python after a while you dont consult it for basic stuff.. with php... even after a decade... im still going there to remember if a method is all words glued, or with underscore... and the argument orders, etc. hint php.net/method will take you direct to the docs to check that argument ordering
johnnymonster 13y ago
Documentation was originally the reason why I started working on php all those years ago, and that set the bar for every other language that i've working on since!

alttag 13y ago

I think you're right, and there's a lesson here. I was recently evaluating a several options on github for a tool I needed. All options satisfied my basic requirements, so the choice came down to community/recency, and documentation. I went with the project that was better documented. Joke was on me, there had been several great feature updates, but without new documentation. So, please, I implore OS committers, as much as it may be a pain, please require documentation updates when accepting patches!

robertfw 13y ago

We switched from PHP to Python a few years back and the one thing I consistently miss is the documentation. I feel that PHP has far superior documentation in terms of clearly showing arguments, returns, examples etc.

dspillett 13y ago
It is how PHP survived (at least in the 4.x.x and early 5.x.x days when I last used it) the massively inconsistent "standard" library: the documentation reduced the effect of that problem considerably and made discovery of features relatively easy. A "good enough" system with excellent documentation is going to win out against a better system without the doc documentation to make library feature discovery and use easy. It'll be interesting to see how node.js develops in this regard. Currently the core documentation is pretty good there, but as the size of the project grows it'll take effort to maintain a certain standard and coverage.
gcb1 13y ago
yep. but python after a while you dont consult it for basic stuff.. with php... even after a decade... im still going there to remember if a method is all words glued, or with underscore... and the argument orders, etc. hint php.net/method will take you direct to the docs to check that argument ordering

johnnymonster 13y ago

Documentation was originally the reason why I started working on php all those years ago, and that set the bar for every other language that i've working on since!