From: Tom Cloyd <tomcloyd@...>
Date: 2009-02-14T17:23:59+09:00
Subject: Re: Good GUI documentation

7stud -- wrote:
> Ruby Student wrote:
>   
>> I want something simple or at least well documented. 
>>
>>     
>
> The language itself isn't well documented--or even adequately 
> documented.  The documentation is often non-existent or it's complete 
> shite.  The powers that be could get good documentation for free if they 
> wanted.  This is all they would have to do:
>
> REXML#xpath
>
>
> and then provide the means for users to post comments and within a year 
> the whole damn language would be completely documented by the users 
> themselves.  See the php docs for the best docs of any language I've 
> encountered.  Unfortunately, Ruby just shoots itself in the foot as far 
> as the docs go.  It doesn't matter how great a language is advertised to 
> be--if the docs suck, the language sucks.
>   
Umm. Having a bad day, are we? Well I DO love good documentation, so I'm 
with you on that, but there's another point of view I want to suggest: 
Documentation simply records (hopefully in a well-organized way) what 
someone knows or thinks YOU'll want to to know. That same information is 
very accessible in a supportive community.

I'm a rank amateur in Ruby, with very limited time. I find it generally 
quite enough to have the available documentation plus the community 
knowledge in this discussion list. It's certainly more current than any 
written documentation could be.

Not a perfect solution, but a pretty good one!

Tom

-- 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tom Cloyd, MS MA, LMHC - Private practice Psychotherapist
Bellingham, Washington, U.S.A: (360) 920-1226
<< tc@tomcloyd.com >> (email)
<< TomCloyd.com >> (website) 
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