For many developers, Stack Overflow has become the go-to place on the Internet for getting programming questions answered. The site's community-based question-and-answer model, combined with extensive gamification, has made it not just an essential resource for programmers of all kinds, but one of the most visited sites on the Internet. Today, the company announced a new product that aims to tackle another long-standing developer bugbear: documentation.
With this new product, named Documentation, Stack Overflow is hoping to bring the same influences that made Stack Overflow a success to the world of creating developer documentation that is rich with sample code to meet the needs of developers. As with the Q&A site, the intent is to develop a community that is rewarded for its contributions through upvotes and badges, giving a way to thank people for adding value and to offer recognition to those who consistently improve the content.
The first focus of Documentation is the development of code samples. Stack Overflow has worked with a handful of companies including PayPal, Microsoft-owned Xamarin, Dropbox, and Twitch in a closed beta. These companies all offer APIs that are already documented. The value that Documentation adds is the ability to extend those references describing the names of functions and the meanings of the parameters to include much richer content showing how to use those APIs in ways that the user community finds useful. Useful sample code is often missing from API documentation, and even when it exists, it's often narrowly tailored to do the bare minimum to demonstrate how a particular API or APIs are used. The hope with Documentation is to go far beyond this, creating a system where developers can offer a much wider range of examples.
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