Awesome Documentation
The last couple of days I’ve been literally sweating over the PHP- framework called Zend Framework (shorthand ZF). It was hot and humid in the Netherlands, but also my programming skills weren’t up to the level to easily solve the test at hand. Since the reason for me to work with ZF was not so much a choice, as it was related to a potential new job. They have given me a test to determine my competence in the PHP-language. But this post isn’t about the test, it is about something different. I took a deep-dive into ZF, but the water felt cold.
First of all I’m not an experienced programmer so it probably takes way longer for me to absorb the way of the framework. But apart from this I was eager to get my test done in the best possible way. So I started looking for resources: screencasts, tutorial, code snippets, and so forth. And believe me I surf the Internet a lot — most people will probably say I surf too much. But I was heavily disappointed with the clarity and ‘sexiness’ of the examples and documentation I’ve found.
Of course in a field such as computer science of course you aren’t suppose to judge a framework by the quality of its documentation. You are supposed to talk about its garbage collection, scaling possibilities and how it natively supports your wildest technical dream. But for me as a beginner… I need to learn a lot and make lots of mistakes so I want a certain gentle introduction. In this respect I feel a daily graving for How to Think Like a Computer Scientist (Python), Railscasts (RoR), or Gitcasts (Git) for that matter. These guys (the community as a whole I presume) are producing attractive and cool documentation.
This reminds me of this video from Kathy Sierra. She eloquently explains that its not about how good your tool is — but how awesome it makes the user feel. Well ZF didn’t made me feel awesome. How did ZF make you feel?
