Ask HN: What is/are the best documentation(s) you have ever read?

6 points·alienreborn··4 comments

It can be for a tool or language or OS or software etc.

My favourite is for an ETL tool called Informatica (It has got awesome help and documentation that comes with the tool, which made learning such a complex tool lot easier)

I also like Python's documentation.

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Java's documentation is pretty good, and it's usually the first place I look if I need to see how something in the Java world works.

Sencha's Ext-JS has interesting documentation. It seems comprehensive, but I've run into undocumented properties and undocumented interactions between documented properties before, and that makes me very wary of what I read there. Further, they only offer documentation for the most current version of their libraries. Unless you are always using the cutting edge, you're not guaranteed that the documentation will adequately describe what you need to do.

PHP's is fairly good. http://www.php.net/docs.php There are probably better docs out there though.

I really like the Github browse code format, although that's not technically "documentation" :)

OpenBSD's manpages are fantastic.

I find a lot of the stuff in the Scheme sphere well-written, clear, concise, comprehensive, and eye opening (from the "lambda papers" onward...although the early history of Scheme is probably not exactly the kind of documentation you're asking about). I've learned an enormous amount from the Dr. Scheme documentation (I guess it's all "Racket" now). As another example, the documentation for Gambit-C is a real pleasure to read:

http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~gambit/doc/gambit-c.pdf

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