Ungoogleable Erlang Documentation

While I’m complaining about Erlang: why doesn’t Google ever return any hits on the documentation? If I google “perl sprintf” the first hit is the documentation page http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/sprintf.html. The same thing happens if I Google “python array” or “lisp map” or “php echo.” If I type “erlang supervisor” I don’t get anything manual-like until the 18th hit with this page, which isn’t even the man page. Moreover, that page doesn’t even link to the actual manual page despite referring to it:

This section should be read in conjunction with supervisor(3), where all details about the supervisor behaviour is given.

In fact, even if you start at the documentation page, it’s not clear how you would find supervisor (3) aside from actually typing “man supervisor” at the command prompt. The Erlang Reference Manual (with its HORRIBLE HORRIBLE FRAMES) doesn’t actually talk about the supervisor behaviour, presumably because this is technically an OTP thing. Eventually, I go to the index and there it is. Why is this so hard? I feel like I can’t be the only one who finds this frustrating.

Leave a Reply

This is a captcha-picture. It is used to prevent mass-access by robots. (see: www.captcha.net)

You must read and type the 5 chars within 0..9 and A..F, and submit the form.

  

Oh no, I cannot read this. Please, generate a