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General Discussion

Kareem Jeiroudi
Kareem Jeiroudi
14,984 Points
Posted by Kareem Jeiroudi
Kareem Jeiroudi
14,984 Points

The documentation is overwhelming!

I often find myself reading through the documentation but finding out too little about what I need. Any suggestion on how I can benefit more from reading the documentation? I often don't know what search keywords I should use in order to find best results, confuse two concepts together, or not able to reproduce documented examples. I just don't understand why everyone relies on documentation, whereas I never find it that useful, and feel constantly overwhelmed with the amount of information it holds. I would seriously appreciate it, if anyone had this issue before and managed to learn what the best practice is when going through the documentation.

Alexander Davison
Alexander Davison
65,469 Points

Which documentation are you searching in?

2 Answers

Kareem Jeiroudi
Kareem Jeiroudi
14,984 Points
Kareem Jeiroudi
Kareem Jeiroudi
14,984 Points

For instance, I was just trying to navigate around in Xcode, since it feels quite different from other IDEs I've seen before (e.g. IntellJ Idea with Java). In that regard, Apple provides this online guide for Xcode https://help.apple.com/xcode/mac/8.0/#/devc8c2a6be1, which, of course, did prove to be helpful. However, my problem is that I can't find my way easily, it takes quite a while to understand their wording (what they refer to with a particular word) sometimes. Othertimes, I'd be reading a whole section, to I realise at the end that it's so irrelevant to my search. Just to be clear, the same applies to IntelliJ IDEA, it's not like JetBrains has written a better documentation. Therefore, my question is whether anyone have a suggestion on how to improve navigating in documentations or manuals, to find more relevant results, faster. I hope you know what I'm talking about...

David Moorhead
David Moorhead
18,005 Points
David Moorhead
David Moorhead
18,005 Points

Hi, Kareem, I understand your feelings.

Often, after I've eye-ball scanned documentations, I use the search function for the list of keywords I've chosen. If they're not there, say, in the pdf or a web page, I scoot to the next document or page. I might have to search several times, because keywords have been added to my list. The search function has proven advantageous when considering context, time consumption and impatience.

Hope that's helpful :)

David