Re: All these newbie questions that are answered by documentation
Re: All these newbie questions that are answered by documentation
- Subject: Re: All these newbie questions that are answered by documentation
- From: Phillip Mills <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2001 16:27:14 -0500
On 11/9/01 3:31 PM, "Erik M. Buck" <email@hidden> wrote:
>
3) There is a lack of good concepts and overview documentation. Newbies
>
refuse to just dive in and read the details about classes. They seem to
>
want broad overviews that at least tell them where to look. Combined with
>
the fact that newbies don't even know the terminology to use when searching,
>
they can not find anything.
[...]
>
For 3), more is better, but most of the newbies posting have never bothered
>
to read Object Oriented Programming and Objective-C. I don't know how we
>
can expect these people to read any kind of overview if they are not willing
>
to even learn the language of the frameworks.
Your #3 has been my major stumbling block. I did read the language
documentation, and the Stepwise article on retain and friends...but that
really didn't prepare me for the Cocoa documentation wasteland. It's
incredibly pointless to tell people to RTFM when the major problem is
determining *which* FM.
It's like the user interface joke: "After a few weeks it'll become
intuitive." In this case it's, by the time you no longer need the
information, you'll know exactly where it is.
PowerPlant was almost as bad in the days before "The Powerplant Book" got
fleshed out. There, however, there was always the option of using the
debugger to step through the source and discover the "truth".
Given that I, and many others, would go to those lengths to learn a
framework, I don't think the implication of laziness is truly justified.
What I'm not prepared to do is read all of the API cold in hopes that I'll
remember specific bits on the day they become relevant. I think the
relevance part is the main thing missing (...along with completeness...and
accuracy if you include the 'man' pages).
Perhaps, on joining the mailing list, everyone should have to demonstrate
that they've read Vermont Recipes before they're allowed to post. :-)