[erlang-questions] Erlang documentation -- a modest proposal

Loïc Hoguin essen@REDACTED
Fri Sep 23 08:40:32 CEST 2016


On 09/23/2016 05:18 AM, Kenneth Lakin wrote:
> Speaking of the User's Guide... -ideally- someone with no Erlang
> experience should first be reading the Reference Manual User's Guide
> along with the Getting Started Guide (or LYSE or something) to pick up
> the fundamentals, rather than the various module Reference Manuals. In
> my experience, reference manuals exist to quickly provide useful
> information to people who are already familiar with a language. They
> shouldn't be language primers, as primers serve another purpose and
> should be in another document.

That's the thing: you have no control over what document people will 
read first. You also have no control over what people will *remember*.

When first coming to the language, most people will 
forget/misremember/misunderstand most of what they read until they get 
some practice; and that's when a good function reference with all 
details and examples is helpful.

-- 
Loïc Hoguin
http://ninenines.eu
Author of The Erlanger Playbook,
A book about software development using Erlang



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