Re:Stack Overflow and the Zeitgeist of Computer Programming
by hocuspocus on Monday November 23, 2015 @09:13AM
(#10614646)
> Many projects have lousy documentation, so one needs to build the documentation from experience and reading source code.
This... seeing ElasticSearch in the trending terms is a good example.
Re:Stack Overflow and the Zeitgeist of Computer Programming
by luhn on Friday November 27, 2015 @12:47PM
(#10638158)
Heartily agree with this. I used ElasticSearch on a project a month or so ago with high expectations from the buzz about it on the internet. What I got instead was hours of scouring ill-written and terse documentation and a nested JSON query 12 layers deep.
I complained about this to a friend and he suggested writing my own full-text search using Redis... I'll take Elasticsearch.
When one grasps that is all about Algorithms + Data Structures, it is easier to abstract over specific languages and libraries.
Personally I think the major drive to Stack Overflow is bad documentation.
Many projects have lousy documentation, so one needs to build the documentation from experience and reading source code.
The answers in Stack Overflow reflect that experience that has not been put in documentation.
Up to the early 2000's it was enough to have a pile of books with the project tech being used.