[erlang-questions] yet more ranting about Erlang docs

[James Hague]

I find the Erlang documentation to be on par with the documentation
for other languages. Some things are great, some not so great. The
Python docs, for example, are so confusing to navigate that I usually
just google for whatever I'm looking for, because I can't find things
using the table of contents, index, and built-in search.

Perhaps the most visible change I'd make to the Erlang docs is to
change "stdlib" to "Standard Library" and move it to the top level of
the contents, not beneath "Basic Applications."

When I was a beginner, most of my trouble stemmed from how the
standard library was actually implemented and not so much the docs.
Why is "lists" plural, but not "dict"? Why are there so many
overlapping modules about dictionaries/sets/trees? Why is all the
match_spec stuff inside of the ets module, which obscures the
simplicity of ets tables? Why are specialty modules like erl_tar mixed
in with more fundamental modules? And so on. We all know this :)

James