modglot VS documentation-framework

I started a small hobby project. First with TypeScript and Modern Web Dev Server (https://modern-web.dev/guides/dev-server/getting-started/). I don't want bundling and for a while life was good. But then I had some npm packages that didn't support EcmaScript modules. I found a workaround but suddenly I lost motivation. I then thought, okay, perhaps time to change to Deno.

Half a year later I changed to vanilla Rust, trunk, Webassembly and some JavaScript glue code and suddenly a lot of things got easier. Of course as a Rust programmer it is easy for me. But I am also a JavaScript programmer.

This is just anecdotal but it really seems to me that the JavaScript ecosystem is so deeply flawed to burn out people. Let me list two main points which are broken:

- Types are wonky. TypeScript does a huge work to "fix" JavaScript and I love TypeScript. But TypeScript cannot fix the soundness holes in JavaScript. There will be always things that don't work out of the box.

- The missing dependency story. Node introduced CommonJS, but it didn't work on browsers. Browser just added objects to the browser's Window object. Later there are EcmaScript modules but too late. I wrote a hacky polyglot which does both UMD and EcmaScript modules, but I feel the polyglot to be brittle. https://github.com/nalply/modglot

I am still thinking about it, but I feel JavaScript could go the way of PHP. Still important, but too much a mess to be taken seriously. Perhaps in about ten years. I don't know.

One problem I encountered with ESM TypeScript development on the browser without bundling: many Node packages aren't set up for that.

You might ask why without bundling?

Sometimes you just want to start something simple on the browser and compile to JavaScript on the fly.

I tried the dev server from Modern Web [0], and I liked it. I program in TypeScript and the browser reloads whenever I save a file. Of course I could set up a bundler and for a small program waiting times are negligible. But I hate bundlers. I know it's irrational, but nowadays I program for fun so I think I should have the choice to reject bundlers.

This fails for many Node dependencies. There is a conflict between CommonJS and ESM. I am not 100% sure that what I want to achieve is impossible without forking dependencies and making a small change.

I even found a way to have a CommonJs and ESM polyglot, but this hack is extremely ugly, so my intellectual curiosity is satisfied. I named the hack modglot [1]. I don't think this is a good idea and I don't understand enough to propose something. I am somewhat dejected about the current state of TypeScript development for the browser and paused development.

Now I am programming in Rust again just for fun, but if I return to TypeScript, probably I will try out Deno.

[0]: https://modern-web.dev/guides/dev-server/getting-started/

[1]: https://github.com/nalply/modglot

I forget the terminology, but there's a good "grid" breakdown of documentation types (I think this one: https://documentation.divio.com ) that I've simplified a bit for the internal documentation I'm involved with.

* README, HOWTO, INFO, PROJECT, DESIGN, NOTES, FAQ

When I pull down a `git` repo, I read the `README.md` (of course). I make my own `NOTES.md` (eg: `.gitignore`'d) of what commands, environment variables, useful blog posts, search results, whatever. Rarely do I share or encourage sharing of `NOTES.md` wholesale, but it's helpful to be able to pull out a few snippets or re-orient myself when coming back to that software/project.

Then, other documents get prefixed with "HOWTO-Do-Some-Specific-Thing.md", or "INFO-Some-Particular-Component.md".

"PROJECT-...", and "DESIGN-..." are "dangerous" ones in that they can quickly fall out of date, but they can be very useful while they're being actively managed. I guess personally I've started making sure to include dates or "eras" in the title, eg: "PROJECT-[2024-Feb]-Add-Foo-Support.md" or "DESIGN-[2024-02-14]-...". Stuff that's outlived its usefulness can probably be moved to an `ARCHIVE/...` in case you need it later, but keep it out of the way from confusing newcomers 1-3 years from now.

"FAQ-..." almost never comes into play (hopefully) b/c it should mostly get absorbed into "HOWTO-..." or product improvements, and few products seem to rise to the level of needing FREQUENTLY asked questions. Ideally FAQ's would "go away" with work on the product or other documentation, but I've had some success with it as like sales-oriented (and ideally: sales-managed) FAQ / Canned Customer Response learnings.

Putting it all together you get something like:

  * README.md

Resource: Documentation Best Practices - GitBook

I would not suggest people to follow this in 2024 if they are building any system of non-trivial scope and expect it to be adopted by others who are not required to adopt it.

Back in 2017, I compared "code as documentation" to being dropped into on the street of an unfamiliar city, while a good documentation can serve as a map of the city. [1]

Nearly all recent successful efforts for large new systems understand the value of both high-level overviews and detailed examples / onboarding materials to make adoption easier. When solutions to a certain problem are abundant, people do not need to settle for options that do not have great supporting documentation of the four primary kinds. [2]

[1] https://speakerdeck.com/maxvt/i-got-a-lot-of-problems-with-i...

[2] https://documentation.divio.com/

In the whole spectrum of documentation, man pages were designed to cater for a very specific need: information-oriented reference data. Check https://documentation.divio.com/ for a wonderful classification of documentation into four quadrants: reference, explanations, tutorials, and how-to guides. On the other hand, one can write info files for any of the use cases. That does not make info format inherently better or worse than man pages.

During the years, there have been many attempts to bridge the format gap, and convert texts from one representation to another. One of the most ambitious ones was in Tkman, a man viewer built on then Tcl/Tk system. Its really interesting part was the inclusion of rman, or RosettaMan, a converter of text to a somewhat abstract representation that could then be viewed via a GUI.

I personally look for well-crafted man pages as a sign of quality in software and try to provide them in everything I develop. I admit that I don't often find the time or motivation to write non-reference documentation (like tutorials).

I ran into the divio documentation guide recently that seems to have some awesome "how to write docs" docs

https://documentation.divio.com/ is a good overview of the "four types of documentation" paradigm: tutorials, how-to guides, explanations, and reference have to all exist.

One of my major gripes with the JS/TS ecosystem is that "explanations" are sorely lacking. See https://www.typescriptlang.org/tsconfig for the relevant documentation for tsconfig files. Tutorials are on the page, how-to guides abound on the wider internet (like the OP), and the linked TSConfig Reference and JSON Schema (used in code completion in IDEs) are together absolutely massive.

But an explanation is missing! There is no official documentation about how different options interact to say: as I'm walking a file tree as the Typescript compiler, this is how I will interpret a certain file I encounter, what will be outputted, and how that will be interpreted by bundlers and browsers, especially in an ESM world.

https://medium.com/extra-credit-by-guild/tsconfig-json-demys... is in the right direction, but outdated as ESM has become much more popular in the past 3 years, and still organized by option (so it's already somewhat in the "reference" world).

IMO even independent of documentation, the industry's move to ESM is problematic: https://gist.github.com/joepie91/bca2fda868c1e8b2c2caf76af7d... describes many of the issues. But they're certainly exacerbated by good explanation-style documentation that helps people understand how ESM works under the hood!

I really like the system detailed here: https://documentation.divio.com/. That's targeted more towards externally visible docs, but IMO adapts pretty well as for internal resources too.