[asterisk-users] Manager Interface API's

Douglas Garstang dgarstang at oneeighty.com
Wed Aug 16 12:37:35 MST 2006


> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Novack [mailto:jnovack at stromberg-carlson.org]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2006 10:40 AM
> To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
> Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Manager Interface API's
> 
> 
> I, for one, didn't take his comment as anything other than 
> constructive
> Lack of documentation is an issue, open source or not.
> It is an unfortunate situation that many very smart coders understand 
> what they have created, but are unwilling or unable to supply enough 
> information for many others to make effective use of their creation
> How many have struggled through the years with uncommented or poorly 
> commented code when the original creator is off to greener pastures?

Green pastures for sure. I think people develop the code, thinking they will write docs later on. By the time they get close to releasing their code, they've lost interest, or the priority of this project has decreased. It's human nature. The open source community then ends up with software thats unusable.

Is it so ludicrous that if you develop an API that you document it? We're not talking about developing a fahrenheight-celcius converter in basic here. We're talking about an <A>pplication <P>rogramming <I>interface! It's a programming interface. It's not the same as some GUI where you can get an idea of how it works by using it. If an API doesn't have any docs, it's completely useless.

Doug.



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