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posted by n1 on Monday June 05 2017, @10:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the git-gud dept.

The Open Source Survey asked a broad array of questions. One that caught my eye was about problems people encounter when working with, or contributing to, open source projects. An incredible 93 percent of people reported being frustrated with “incomplete or confusing documentation”.

That’s hardly a surprise. There are a lot of projects on Github with the sparsest of descriptions, and scant instruction on how to use them. If you aren’t clever enough to figure it out for yourself, tough.

[...] According to the Github Open Source Survey, 60 percent of contributors rarely or never contribute to documentation. And that’s fine.

Documenting software is extremely difficult. People go to university to learn to become technical writers, spending thousands of dollars, and several years of their life. It’s not really reasonable to expect every developer to know how to do it, and do it well.

2017 Open Source Survey

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday June 05 2017, @06:19PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 05 2017, @06:19PM (#520884)

    Back when modems were 2400 bits/second as God intended.

    Noobs. My dad and grandfather has TRS-80s with 300 baud modems. Eventually my dad upgrades to a TRS80 4p with internal 1200 baud modem, which was pretty fast. Radio Shack used to include like "free 5 hours of compuserve" little carbon paper free accounts with all manner of products.

    Believe it or not I was BBS-ing in '87 or '88 with a 1200 baud modem I got from the "free" bin at a local ham radio fest (back in those days, radio fests had a lot of computers). I believe in Christmas of '89 I got a 2400 baud modem, doubling my speed was quite nice. That served until I blew like $500 in '92 or '93 and got a 14.4K and around then internet access was becoming a thing so I got a SLIP account with a dedicated static address, pretty cool.

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