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39 lines
1.9 KiB
39 lines
1.9 KiB
5 years ago
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title = "Things I Learnt The Hard Way - Good Languages Come With Integrated Documentation"
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date = 2019-06-23
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[taxonomies]
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tags = ["en-au", "books", "things i learnt", "languages", "documentation"]
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If you're worried about learning some new programming language, you can bet
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the one with a better documentation is the one that is _born_ with a document
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processor.
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Same goes for the frameworks/libraries of that language.
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<!-- more -->
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The answer for that is the same as [languages that come with
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tests](languages-tests): because the programming language standard library
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comes with a documentation generator or even because documentation is bundled
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in the language itself, it reduces the friction needed to start writing the
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documentation.
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Python is a curious case that it came with a simple documentation generator
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(PyDoc) and a bundled documentation format (DocStrings). Nowadays, almost
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nobody is using the default documentation generator anymore, but because the
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documentation format is still there and is still supported by the language
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(documentation appears as a property of every function, class and module),
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other tools took the post of default documentation generator, but the
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documentation format is still heavy used.
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Also, the opposite seems almost always true: If the language doesn't come with
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integrated documentation, there is a very good chance that the documentation
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or the language or frameworks and libraries will be bad. Or, in the very
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least, every library will pick its own format, every framework will pick its
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own format and they will never match the language format, and you'll end up
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with a mess of a documentation to decipher.
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{{ chapters(prev_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/document-and", prev_chapter_title="If A Function Description Includes An And, It's Wrong", next_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/throw-away", next_chapter_title="Be Ready To Throw Your Code Away") }}
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