How powerful is good documentation for a programming language?

Question

I've been looking at PHP again recently and after having some brushes with other languages, I have realized that PHP's documentation is very well written and easy to understand. People often cite this as one of PHP's strengths. Python is another language that has great documentation, but even without it I think it would still be popular, but pydoc is another huge bonus of Python as a whole.

What other languages do you think would have died off long ago if not for their great documentation? Can amazing programming languages be crippled by lack of "good" documentation?

Answer 1

I think good documentation is important, but it doesn't necessarily have to be created by the people who created the language. If the language is good enough, there'll be a community of people who will write the right things. Or there will be books

Java is a language that had really great docs from the start thanks to Sun's efforts.

However, there are academic languages that are good that had horrible "official" documentation but great community documentation or a few key books.

Answer 2

I would say it is absolutely critical. Like Uri said, it doesn't matter who puts it out, but someone has to put it out there. I've seen many languages where there's either little-to-no documentation, or worse, the documentation didn't reflect the actual state of the language. It's just like having traditional software with no documentation: how can you expect users to learn how to use it or how to fix it when things go wrong if there's no documentation?

Answer 3

I can't think of a language that has survived or become widely used just because it has solid documentation. And "awesome programming languages" is, well, just subjective. One thing I will say though is that I think good documentation can make it a whole lot easier for new/novice programmers to get into a language. If you're not an experienced programmer, and you're trying to pick up a new language, good, thorough docs can be invaluable.

Answer 4

C beat out Bliss as the world's systems programming language in part because of Unix, but it helped that Kernighan and Ritchie wrote one of the best language books ever.