DocumentCode
112851
Title
How API Documentation Fails
Author
Uddin, Gias ; Robillard, Martin P.
Author_Institution
Sch. of Comput. Sci., McGill Univ., Montreal, QC, Canada
Volume
32
Issue
4
fYear
2015
fDate
July-Aug. 2015
Firstpage
68
Lastpage
75
Abstract
Formal documentation can be a crucial resource for learning to how to use an API. However, producing high-quality documentation can be nontrivial. Researchers investigated how 10 common documentation problems manifested themselves in practice. The results are based on two surveys of a total of 323 professional software developers and analysis of 179 API documentation units. The three severest problems were ambiguity, incompleteness, and incorrectness of content. The respondents often mentioned six of the 10 problems as "blockers"\´ that forced them to use another API.
Keywords
application program interfaces; learning (artificial intelligence); software engineering; system documentation; API documentation unit; crucial resource; formal documentation; learning; Application programming interfaces; Databases; Documentation; Software development; Standards; Uniform resource locators; API; documentation; software development; software engineering; user study;
fLanguage
English
Journal_Title
Software, IEEE
Publisher
ieee
ISSN
0740-7459
Type
jour
DOI
10.1109/MS.2014.80
Filename
7140676
Link To Document