Re: Why has the Metrowerks sign been taken down?

>> using new technologies. Apple takes too long to get documentation out
>> for new technologies, and every release of Mac OS X brings significant
>> changes. Ditto for ADC memberships. You can't assume students are
>
> I completely disagree with this statement. There are already Dashboard
> Widgets and Spotlight plugins, the day Tiger came out. I've read on the
> web about how apps are already compiling and working with Mac OS X
> on Intel. These people aren't making this up out of thin ari, they are able
> to do it because of the documentation.
>
> Simply put: If there weren't sufficient documentation, there wouldn't be all
> of the great third party applications on Mac OS X. There are great third
> party applications that take advantage of all of the great technologies in
> Mac OS X, so this implies they are getting their information from somewhere!

Yes they are. You are assuming they're getting it all from
documentation, which is not a valid assumption.

- Large developers like Adobe and Microsoft have direct access to help
from technical support people at Apple. If they can't find the
information they need in the docs, they call or e-mail their
representative and get an answer.

- People attend WWDC or Ad Hoc or possibly other events.

- Apple's developer lists have been an essential source of information
for thousands of developers. There are many people who will tell you
they would never have had a shipping product for Mac OS X without help
of Apple engineers who contribute to those lists.

- Some technologies in Mac OS X are open source, so people can read the
source code of a function to see what it actually does, if it's safe to
pass NULL, and other information they may need.

- Sometimes people just try stuff and twiddle it until it works. This
happens a lot. It's not as efficient as learning from documentation,
but you do what you have to do.

- Developer communities in general, whether they be Apple mailing lists
or forums such as this, allow people who have slogged through things to
share knowledge with other people.

The point is that documentation is not the only source of information,
and for too many people, the alternatives have had to substitute for
missing documentation way too often. I know this, others here know
this, people on Apple's carbon-dev list know this, only you seem to
live under the delusion that the docs are so good that they're the only
source of information anyone needs. What's the weather like on your
planet?

> What you are saying simply makes no sense to me. Sorry.

That's because you seem to have the reasoning capacity of a German
shepherd. Your arguments all go something like this: "If he wasn't born
with money, how else could he be rich?" Yes, being born with money is
one way to be rich, but it's not the only way.

You know, you really aren't very interesting to discuss things with
because you completely ignore valid arguments and just throw out
illogical rationales. No, not really interesting at all.

Larry

.

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