[salgernon]

I’m with parent - what if you don’t have the tool? What if there’s a syntax error in some implementation or dependency such that the tool chokes early?

Human readable headers are accessible out of context if the implementation. They also help provide a clear abstraction - this is the contract. This is what I support as of this version. (And hopefully with appropriate annotations across versions)

[kouteiheika]

> I’m with parent - what if you don’t have the tool?

The "what if you don't have the tool" situation never happens in case of Rust. If you have the compiler you have the tool, because it's always included with the compiler. This isn't some third party tool that you install manually; it's arguably part of the language.

> What if there’s a syntax error in some implementation or dependency such that the tool chokes early?

In C I can see how this can happen with its mess of a build systems; in Rust this doesn't happen (in my 10+ years of Rust I've never seen it), because people don't publish libraries with syntax errors (duh!).

[TheNewAndy]

"Never" is a big call.

In this specific case, your tool requires a web browser (though I'm assuming that there is a non-web browser form of what is being sold here). Maybe you are in a situation where you only have terminal access to the machine.

Maybe you are on your phone just browsing github looking for a library to use

I'm sure people can continue to imagine more examples. It is entirely possible that we have different experiences of projects and teams.

[jmb99]

> The "what if you don't have the tool" situation never happens in case of Rust.

So it’s built into GitLab and GitHub? BitBucket? How easy is it to use on windows (i.e. is it is easy as opening a .h in notepad and reading it)? How easy is it to use from a command line environment with vim or emacs bindings?

I could go on. “Never” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your assertion. I shouldn’t have to install a toolchain (let alone rely on a web browser) to read API documentation.

[gary_0]

The "what if you don't have the software" argument doesn't hold water for me. What if you don't have git? What if you don't have a text editor? What if you don't have a filesystem?

Most programming language communities are okay with expecting a certain amount of (modern) tooling, and C can't rely on legacy to remain relevant forever...