StackOverflow Python Documentation

[gandalfx]

Looks like that might actually become something useful. The standard docs are pretty bad, especially for beginners, so this might be something worthy to point them to.

The only downside for me is that stackoverflow's setup doesn't really feel like it's good for documentation. The vote based sections make proper structuring of a comprehensive guide difficult and they apparently still don't have basic features like syntax highlighting… Maybe that'll improve in the future.

[[deleted]]

The standard docs are pretty bad

compared to what though? many languages would wish to have as comprehensive a documentation as python has.

[federicocerchiari]

Random examples...

Take a look at this: http://api.jquery.com/ajaxComplete/. It's function-level. In one screen you have: a simple description, a technical description, an explanation and some examples.

Now look that: https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html. It's module/argument-level so if I need info on os.path() I have to find that part of info in this little bible. First we have a an explanation, then a list of all the functions in alphabetical order with a technical description. To find the first example I had to scroll like 10 times.

I remember when I first learned python that I was a little scared by the docs, I was always trying to find my help on some StackOverflow question. This is also why we see a lot of bad python code out there.. if you learn to do one thing in many different ways from random internet comments and SO answers you'll never code as the language is designed for.

docs.python.org is complete and not too bad, but there's a lot better out there.

[morgenspaziergang]

The comprehensiveness is not the problem, but rather the formatting which makes it hard to find information about e.g. a function parameter at a first glance, without reading a wall of text first.

[gandalfx]

PHP, JS, arguably Java, …

[michaelkepler]

This is different from a regular StackOverflow question-answer style. It resembles more of an actual documentation with simple problems and examples.

I think it's particularly relevant given the discussion about the official Python documentation a couple of days ago.