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reading-documentation.html
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reading-documentation.html
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<!doctype html>
<html lang='en'>
<head>
<meta charset='utf-8'>
<meta name='viewport' content='width=device-width,initial-scale=1'>
<title>Reading Documentation</title>
<style>
body {
font-family: sans-serif;
line-height: 1.5;
margin: 40px auto;
max-width: 640px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Reading Documentation</h1>
<p>
<small>
<a href='/'>This is documentation for reading JavaScript documentation
generated by documentation.js</a>
</small>
</p>
<p>
How do you read API documentation?
</p>
<p>
Compared to answers, examples, or narrative documentation, API documentation
can be an intimidating read: it's much more like an Encylopedia than a novel.
</p>
<h4>Understanding the types of things</h4>
<p>
API documentation will have a few explicit classes of things that are documented.
Here are some distinctions that aren't always laid out in other kinds
of documentation:
</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>instance</strong> methods will usually be denoted with the #
symbol in API documentation. These are methods that you <em>call on an instance of an object</em>.
For instance, in native JavaScript, strings have a <em>.toUpperCase()</em>
method. You don't call this method on the String type, but you call it
on a specific string: like you can write
<code>var yelling = 'hi'.toUpperCase()</code>
Remember that, though documentation uses the # character to show what's an
instance method, you don't actually use that symbol in your source code.
</li>
<li><strong>static</strong> methods instead are called on objects or classes
without needing to instantiate anything. Usually in documentation, static
methods are denoated with a '.' The <code>fromCharCode</code>
method of strings is an example of this: it'll be documented as a static
method and called like <code>String.fromCharCode(20)</code>. Notice
that we're not calling this on a specific string, but the String
class itself.
</li>
</ul>
</body>
</html>