Here's looking at you, kid

[Saurabh Das via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 13 November 2015 at 22:34:18 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
>
> Recently there's been an uptick of site visits on dlang.org and 
> also dmd downloads (http://erdani.com/d/downloads.daily.png).
>
> Amid increased scrutiny it's important to focus on improving 
> documentation. I suggest everyone in the community to consider 
> improving dlang.org in any way. For Phobos in particular, the 
> lack of documentation and examples for some really useful 
> artifacts is damaging. Sometimes all it takes is adding "///" 
> to one unittest.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Andrei

This is slightly off-topic, but: I've been encouraging my friends 
and colleagues to use Dlang over the last year and the one pain 
point they constantly tell me about is that the documentation 
website is "difficult to use" and "looks intimidating".

I believe that this is due to the colour scheme - it isn't 
friendly or vibrant. For example, look at these documentation 
websites:

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/
https://docs.python.org/2/library/functions.html
https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-4.8.1.0/docs/Control-Monad.html
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xfhwa508(v=vs.110).aspx

In particular, contrast the Dlang "Getting Started" page with 
some others:

http://dlang.org/getstarted.html
https://www.python.org/about/gettingstarted/
https://www.djangoproject.com/start/
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html
https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/referencelibrary/GettingStarted/DevelopiOSAppsSwift/

The others do feel much more "complete" and "friendlier" that 
dlang.org. I feel that the completeness part will be addressed by 
the community but the intangible "friendlier" aspect is something 
we are missing.

Unfortunately I'm not an expert in these matters either - just 
bringing out what I've heard from multiple people about dlang.org.

Thanks,
Saurabh

PS: Point taken Andrei, I will find some time to contribute back 
to the Dlang community, even if it's only documentation.