Take a peek at the homepage and give it a shot. It’s a site for all programmers building web apps, native mobile apps, video games, desktop software, literally anything. When you get to more complex stuff such as Laravel or Rails, you can look up functions to get a list of all the options, possible default values, and how to handle return values.ĭevDocs isn’t just a site for front-end developers. Once you’ve added an API to your dashboard, you can browse through examples of code snippets & proper implementations for common features.įor example, the box model page covers everything about the CSS box model, with links to individual properties and beginner tutorials. No question this project is one of the largest out there and it’s really a great tool for developers. Not to mention it has a free Chrome plugin for adding DevDocs right to your browser. It’s by far the most comprehensive list of programming documentation on the web, all curated into one easy-to-read interface.Īnd, did I mention this thing has mobile support and offline mode, too? You can enable all the docs you’ll need, then go offline and still have full access to everything. This website is constantly being updated with new features and new frameworks/developer APIs. Read Also: Developers: Why You Shouldn’t Skip Documentation Most are disabled by default to save on HTTP requests but you can enable them at the click of a button to get full access to all documentation. There are literally hundreds of technologies listed and you can search to find whatever you want. From the basics of HTML5 and CSS3 to complex server technologies like Apache and even frontend libraries such as Angular, it’s all here, in one handy location. It also helps you preserve a state of flow by reducing context switches.The free DevDocs site offers a single dashboard for developers to scour through any language they choose. (More on this here.) But in the long run, becoming fluent in the local help systems of your most important applications is more efficient, and leads to serendipitous discoveries. A web search will always be faster in the moment than learning how to use an arcane help system. What I didn’t do at the time, but I’d recommend now, is to also to dig into each tool’s documentation system. I determined that sometimes using a sub-optimal tool would be optimal overall if it allowed me to switch tools less often. Following the advice to use the best tool for the job lead to too many tools for wide variety of jobs. Years ago I had gotten to the point that I was using a menagerie of different software applications, none of which I knew well. I’ve done the former but wish I’d put more work into the latter sooner. ![]() The best approach may be to commit to a small number of tools and learn how each one’s documentation works. Maybe the local documentation would be easier to use if I invested more time learning how to use it, but this investment has to be repeated for each application every application has its own documentation system. Most of the software I use has local documentation, but the documentation is more difficult to use than doing a web search. ![]() The documentation for Emacs is extensive, well-written, and thoroughly integrated with the editor. Now it’s common for software to have online documentation, but most software still isn’t self-documenting in the way that Emacs is. Originally the phrase “self-documenting” contrasted with software that only had paper documentation. ![]() ![]() It’s also a very old editor, with roots going back to the 1970s. This made me think of the Emacs slogan that it is a self-documenting editor. Or maybe it was there, but I gave up too soon. I keep offline documentation for just this situation, but the information I needed wasn’t in my local files. I was trying to do a little work on my laptop, but I couldn’t do what I intended to do because I needed a network connection to access some documentation. The electricity went out for a few hours recently, and because the power was out, the internet was out.
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