{"id":185809,"date":"2014-08-10T22:36:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-11T03:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/08\/10\/why-documentation-sucks\/"},"modified":"2014-08-10T22:36:00","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T03:36:00","slug":"why-documentation-sucks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/08\/10\/why-documentation-sucks\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Documentation Sucks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The essay, at <a href=\"http:\/\/linux.slashdot.org\/story\/14\/08\/04\/1426232\/ask-slashdot-what-to-do-about-the-sorry-state-of-foss-documentation\">Ask Slashdot<\/a> speaks specifically to documentation for open source software, but I would argue that it could be applied almost anywhere:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Back when Sourceforge wasn&#8217;t a sh%$-heap of garbage in every possible way I did a lot of documentation for various programs. I&#8217;m not a programmer at all, but I can use the damn things and tell others how to do so as well. The biggest problems I had were ALWAYS at the hands of the developer. They&#8217;d have these posts desperately looking for documentation writers then treat us like total f%$#ing garbage when we had to ask questions. I can&#8217;t f%$#ing tell you how many times I was told to read the f%$#ing source, despite me being very up-front about my lack of coding ability. &#8220;If you can&#8217;t figure out how to use the program then how can you write documentation?&#8221;<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">MOTHERf%$#ER, IT DOESN&#8217;T WORK LIKE THAT. F%$# you in your goddamn asshole you f%$#ing arrogant f%$#ing pricks.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">I stopped bothering when I stopped using Linux, which is a story in itself. The fact of the matter is the majority of programmers are assholes that have no business operating in normal society. Lock them in the f%$#ing closet and let them read the f%$#ing source until they jizz all over their crusty beards while fantasizing about Stallman&#8217;s brown pucker. Maybe THEN the people that make documentation will give enough of a sh%$ to try to do so again.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>BTW, that is a comment, not the main post, but I think that he &#8220;gets&#8221; it.<\/p>\n<p>When the programming community, whether open or closed source, holds documentation writers in abject contempt, the loser is the user.<\/p>\n<p>H\/T E-Cop at the <a href=\"http:\/\/stellarparthenon.org\/\">Stellar Parthenon BBS<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The essay, at Ask Slashdot speaks specifically to documentation for open source software, but I would argue that it could be applied almost anywhere: Back when Sourceforge wasn&#8217;t a sh%$-heap of garbage in every possible way I did a lot of documentation for various programs. I&#8217;m not a programmer at all, but I can use &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1092,1003,989,982,979],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-philosophy","category-software","category-stupid","category-wanker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185809"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}