Documentation is very important for us developers as it guides us to build what we need using a tool or service. When the documentation is great, the developer experience feels seamless. When the documentation is incorrect, missing details, or not clear, we struggle building with the tool.
What was the best documentation you've used? It can be for any framework, service, or tool. Also, what made this documentation so useful to you?
P.S: at Medusa, we're currently in the process of revamping our documentation to provide a better developer experience. If you're interested in contributing to an open-source project, you can always check out current good first issues or report any issues you find in the documentation.
Top comments (19)
Best documentation I've ever used was for IBM Notes (former Lotus Notes) Designer.
Almost every object. every property, every method were described and contained usage examples.
Seems like IBM doesn't support it anymore but IBM generally have good documentation!
IBM has ruined IBM Notes and sold it to HCL.
Long time ago IBM Notes was a main platform to build groupware solutions. But "genius" IBM managers just ruined this product, it became outdated, companies who used this product for years switched to other products and as a final step, IBM sold this product to HCL.
HCL tries to resurrect it, but I think it could not be done, time is lost.
From what I can tell it's something similar to Notion right?
I have no experience with Notion, checked it now, yes, it looks like HCL Notes (former IBM Notes, and Lotus Notes).
HCL Notes presents mail, calendar, todo, discussions in an integrated environment, also you can build your own application (called databases), that utilize all these capabilities. Multi-platform, web-enabled, mobile, etc etc.
More info:
hcltechsw.com/notes
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HCL_Domino
Also, Notion is a SaaS (software as a service) product as I understand. HCL (IBM, Lotus) Notes/Domino can be installed on a company's premises and used in an isolated environment (for extra security purposes, classified document processing, etc etc).
Ah makes sense. Well it definitely must have been a loss for the users who were using it!
Probably the ZX Spectrum Plus 2 user manual.
Interesting! What do you think makes it a good documentation?
It walks you through everything from the basics of BASIC to machine code and port mappings for the Z80. As a kid, I learned so much about programming from it.
Stripe API docs...
No doubt!
The Symfony documentation
I've used the Symfony documentation before and it's definitely detailed and useful
Vue is definitely up there in terms of documentation quality...
Django has the best docs I have ever seen.
Never tried it but sounds interesting to take a look at! what do you think makes it the best?
Best documentation i have ever read is Laravel's , straight-forward detailed and has a decent amount of practical examples
I also tried GoLang, their tutorials are super easy to grasp
IBM Cloud Education
By far the best documentation so far in terms of rich content and usability.