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630 points sendilkumarn | 3 comments | 24 Mar 22 16:46 UTC | HN request time: 0.636s | source
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dend ◴[24 Mar 22 17:58 UTC] No.30793342[source]▶
This is an interesting take on documentation - mainly because I fail to see the value proposition in paying for the functionality provided.

Speaking from my own experience:

- Notifications. I am not sure that I've ever needed to know when a doc is updated, because if there is anything radical coming on the market (or in a spec proposal), there are other avenues to find out about it.

- Collections. That is already a functionality in the browser that is not locked into just one documentation site.

- Offline mode. There is Zeal[0] if you like client-side software and devdocs.io[1] if you like browser mode.

Combine all that with the fact that it's just for MDN, and the appeal kind of disappears. YMMV, of course.

[0]: https://zealdocs.org/

[1]: https://devdocs.io/

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1. giancarlostoro ◴[25 Mar 22 01:48 UTC] No.30797845[source]▶
The value is that they've documented every front-end DOM api for you and done a lot of leg work for free for years. This will fund their efforts and they do more than just web, they've also been adding documentation on doing back-end web development as well. I'm sure the more subscribers they get, the more they can add. I sincerely hope MDN keeps the majority of the income from these efforts. For front-end work I skip Google or Stack Overflow and look through MDN.
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2. drstewart ◴[25 Mar 22 07:17 UTC] No.30799464[source]▶
>The value is that they've documented every front-end DOM api for you and done a lot of leg work for free for years.

If that's the value, why don't they lead with that and leave the rest out?

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3. giancarlostoro ◴[28 Mar 22 12:56 UTC] No.30830040[source]▶
Marketing people aren't necessarily developers. This is a case where you should let a sane developer do the marketing.