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How do I know if a project has a good documentation? (jlai.lu)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hey!

I not good at understanding a project from its code. So, I try as much as I can to understand it from its technical documentation first. But so many time I fell overwhelm by the information: I don't know were to start to read and I don't know how to find a specific information.

How can I know when I'm lacking in understanding the project and when the project is lacking good documentation?
Where should I start while studying a documentation which readme doesn't say "read this next"?

Thank you

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

What are you trying to understand and what type of project are you looking at? Are you looking to run a program or use a library?

Good documentation to me is here’s how to get this installed, here’s a basic overview of getting started, here’s all the methods/functions with their arguments and a description, and optionally some very basic examples programs to sanity check everything is working ok.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Poor documentation is when i find myself reading unit tests to figure out how to use something.
At least there are unit tests...
Bad documentation is when i am digging through source code.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I am not speaking of something in particular. It was more of a general question. I usually figure it out how to install a project (usually...) but my question is more about technical documentation.