
Ask HN: What makes a great API documentation in your opinion? - knes
There are a lot of different ways to do documentation.<p>There are the basics like having good SDK&#x2F;libraries references. For example, [Stripe&#x27;s famous 3 panels view](https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stripe.com&#x2F;docs&#x2F;api) is one of many ways of displaying that information.<p>It does get quickly blurry when you introduce topics like:<p>- Explaining the main concepts of the products&#x2F;API<p>- Quick Start Guides (multiple languages?)<p>- How-tos for the main use cases<p>- Tutorials such as how to do &lt;use_case_x&gt; with &lt;specific_language_or_framework&gt;. Do you even include that in the docs?<p>Then there are the features of docs:<p>- Button to try this function&#x2F;API call<p>- Includes the user&#x27; API keys in the sample code if they are logged in<p>- all of the content in one very long page or split it up.<p>- etc<p>So HN, what do you like to see in an API documentation? from little features, cosmetics, layout or how to structure the content. I want to hear about it!
======
alistproducer2
I like reference APIs mixed with examples. MSDN is great when it does this and
pretty horrible when they don't. There's nothing worse than a highly composed
API (think Android) without examples.

------
kstirman
In 2009 I was working on building out API docs and looked around for good
examples. Stripe was so far ahead of everyone else. I still think they have
some of the best documentation out there.

