Programming

Because usually if you end up at the API reference in that situation it's a code / project smell that other stuff is going wrong.

If I want to use a library to do something, you should be able to search for what you want to do + language / framework, find the library's docs, follow the install instructions and then look through the highest level API / instructions and then just go from there.

If you find yourself confused at unhelpful API references that just means that they have badly written top level API docs, badly written intros, or quite probably just badly written APIs.

I find that this is best explained by the four types of documentation theory. Often when you're starting out, you need a tutorial or how-to guide (or even just an overview of what the purpose and design language of the API is), rather than a reference, which is what nearly all API documentation is.

I often use grep.app to look for example. It's fulltext search for code on GitHub, and just get information about the parameters and output by looking at the library's code.

How do I get better at understanding API docs without a tutorial to walk me through the basics of how the library works in the first place? Once I have an idea of some of what the library does and how a few commonly-used functions work I can somewhat handle the rest, but getting to that point in the first place is pretty hard for me if no getting started or tutorial section exists. And so I'm very intimidated by a lot of libraries…

It's really hard writing software and knowing every bit of it then seeing it as a new user to write docs.

It’s because the same people who wrote the code usually write the docs, and people who are really good at writing code usually aren’t good at writing docs. It’s two different skill sets that usually don’t coincide.

Case in point: my own documentation for https://nymph.io

I know it’s bad, but I don’t know how to make it good. The code, however, is pretty good. It runs my email service.

Open source projects also aren’t very good at attracting people who both want to volunteer their time writing technical documentation and can.

I do find that everything related to Python is especially badly documented and/or maintained. Maybe I'm just not looking the in right place though? I don't generally use Python as my primary language.

When someone writes API docs, should they assume the reader knows nothing or can they assume the is already experienced?

It takes a lot of effort to write documentation towards newbies, at the cost of making it more difficult for already experienced to find the answer they need.

API documentation isn't a tutorial, it's there to tell you what the arguments are, what it does and what to expect as the output and just generally, what's available.

I actually have the opposite problem as you: it infuriates me when a project's documentation is purely a bunch of examples and then you have to guess if you want to do anything out of the simple tutorial's paved path. Tell me everything that's available so I can piece together something for what I need, I don't want that info on chapter 12 of the example of building a web store. I've been coding for nearly two decades now, I'm not going to follow a shopping cart tutorial just in the off chance that's how you tell how the framework defines many to many relationships.

I believe an ideal world has both covered: you need full API documentation that's straight to the point, so experienced people know about all the options and functions available, but also a bunch of examples and a tutorial for those that are new and need to get started and generally learning how to use the library.

Your case is probably a bit atypical as PyTorch and AI stuff in general is inherently pretty complex. It likely assumes you know your calculus and linear algebra and stuff like that so that'd make the API docs extra dense.

Why is the documentation incomplete?

Asks every programmer since the dawn of time.