Best Reference Site For Each Programming Language?

Howling writes "I've been a PHP programmer for a few years and after taking a trip through many sites Ive learned that www.php.net is probably the most complete source when looking for information/documentation. I have been trying to find similar sites for every other language (Java, perl or ASP, for instance) without equal success, though. I ask: what is the best documentation/reference site for your preferred programming language?"

Comments

Perl and Python

[mangu]

cpan.org and python.org

Re:Perl and Python

[SatanicPuppy]

Agreed. I'd also add Perlmonks.org; it's not documentation per se but it's damn useful.

For java, you have to master the API...Even modules that other people write are often documented with javadoc, and look just the same. Once you use it for a while it becomes familiar.

Re:Perl and Python

[mr_mischief]

perldoc.perl.org

use Perl; comes high on the list, along with PerlMonks and PerlBuzz.

Perl.org in general gets points for being where you can find Use, perldoc, and more.

Re:Perl and Python

[rossjp]

Being that cpan is part of perl.org, I'd say start at perl.org

Re:Perl and Python

[Anonymous Coward]

C was my favorite language for about 20 years, and it still would be if Python hadn't come out.

You know this of course, but I thought I'd mention that your C experience isn't wasted as a Python programmer. The cycle: design in Python => profile => redo bottlenecks in C, is the basis of industrial strength Python application.

Re:Perl and Python

[Bogtha]

However, I do know of a really good author, that is a "dead tree" author, for C: Herbert Schildt.

I used to recommend his books too, but he has a bad reputation among many developers:

Why do many experts not think very highly of Herbert Schildt's books?

A good answer to this question could fill a book by itself. While no book is perfect, Schildt's books, in the opinion of many gurus, seem to positively aim to mislead learners and encourage bad habits. Schildt's beautifully clear writing style only makes things worse by causing many "satisfied" learners to recommend his books to other learners.

Do take a look at the following scathing articles before deciding to buy a Schildt text.
http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/schildt.html
http://herd.plethora.net/~seebs/c/c_tcr.html

The above reviews are admittedly based on two of Schildt's older books. However, the language they describe has not changed in the intervening period, and several books written at around the same time remain highly regarded.

The following humorous post also illustrates the general feeling towards Schildt and his books.

http://www.qnx.com/~glen/deadbeef/2764.html

There is exactly one and ONLY one C book bearing Schildt's name on its cover that is at all recommended by many C experts - see Q 25.

Re:Perl and Python

[kat_skan]

Another good one would be the Python Cookbook on ASPN. And at a more abstract level, Ward's Wiki has explanations and discussions of a wide range of interesting tools, languages, and techniques.

Java.sun.com

[acon1modm]

just google: java X class where X is whatever you want. Top results will be sun java docs which are complete and have links to parent and descendent classes, implemented interfaces, etc.

Re:Java.sun.com

[Vectronic]

http://java.sun.com/reference/

Samples, API, Docs, Tutorials, etc.
(redudndant, but people usually like links)

Re:Java.sun.com

[B4D BE4T]

I agree. I have been using Java for a while now and have always found the information I needed at java.sun.com. Just about anything you could want to know about Java can be found in the reference section. The API section has all of the classes listed alphabetically for the more recent versions of Java with a fairly detailed description of each class and its methods.

Re:Java.sun.com

[Reverend528]

There is also the Java Forums which is a great place to ask people to do your intro CS homework and get flamed.

Re:Java.sun.com

[hansamurai]

I'd also recommend Javaranch for people beginning Java, I discovered it when I was going for certification and it helped immensely.

ASP

[Anonymous Coward]

for asp: asp.net. has very good tutorials. for reference use msdn library.

Here's what I do

[shellster_dude]

php: php.net
coldfusion: adobe.com
html, css, javascript, sql: w3schools.com
python: python.org
c/c++: devshed.com
java: java.sun.com

Anything else: my brilliant co-worker.

Re:Here's what I do

[MightyYar]

A quick glance at devshed.com shows no C/C++ at all.

Hmmm...

Re:Here's what I do

[MrMunkey]

For JavaScript I head over to

developer.mozilla.org

It's pretty clear, but unfortunately you still have to watch out for browser incompatibilities. They sometimes will have a note about it though.

Re:Here's what I do

[shellster_dude]

I forgot to mentionhttp://www.regular-expressions.info/

Re:Here's what I do

[apathy maybe]

html, css, javascript, sql: w3schools.com

Why oh why would you go to w3schools (ad filled piece of shit), when you go directly to the source for all the HTML and CSS requirements?

For example, want to learn HTML?
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/Advanced.html

Already know HTML but want to do one thing (or can't remember the exact syntax?)?
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/

Do a search through the HTML 4.01 Specification.
Similarly for XHTML.

CSS tips and tricks? You got them all.

Just learning? Get started with HTML and CSS. Other CSS resources all also easily available.

Oh right, and don't forget the authoritative text...

Basically, for HTML and CSS, it is much better for both beginners and advanced users to go to the W3C rather then the ad filled crap w3schools.

Re:Here's what I do

[fredrik70]

also nice: http://www.quirksmode.org/

Java 6 API Reference

[Anonymous Coward]

The Java 6 API reference.

Tcl -- use the Wikibook

[Xcott Craver]

One of the best tutorials and references for Tcl is the Wikibook on Tcl programming.

Indeed, it's one of the best programming texts I've seen in any language.

Re:Tcl -- use the Wikibook

[DrugCheese]

I've alwaysd found http://tcl.tk/ manuals all I needed but that Wikibook looks like a great place to start.

c/posix: man pages

[Anonymous Coward]

c/posix: man pages

Object Pascal and C

[jmpeax]

Object Pascal reference & C reference.

Suggestions for perl

[howlinmonkey]

Documentation: peldoc.perl.org
Community: perlmonks.org
Articles: www.perl.com (O'Reilly site)

I have found the perl community to be the most open, supportive and cohesive group of all the languages I work with. Right now I am working with PHP, perl and C#, and perl is by far the easiest language to get help and correct information. I can find tons of info on the other languages, but the information isn't always the best quality.

Good luck with your search.

Re:Suggestions for perl

[Lisandro]

Seconded. You can say whatever you want about Perl, but the online documentation at perl.org is second to none. Manuals, tutorials and references are very well written and organized.

C/C++

[Kuraitou]

http://cprogramming.com/ - best site for beginners in my opinion.

Re:C/C++

[nog_lorp]

www.cplusplus.com

Beats the hell out of man pages for the POSIX C libraries.

Re:C/C++

[Simon80]

Standard Template Library:

• SGI reference - readable, comes with informative explanations of concepts
• libstdc++ reference - less readable, but it may have some non-standard things that aren't in the SGI docs, useful if you're using libstd++

Boost libraries:
For anything not present in the standard library, these are the next place to check. They're freely usable in commercial projects.

Re:C/C++

[Anonymous Coward]

www.cplusplus.com

Beats the hell out of man pages for the POSIX C libraries.

I'd also like to add www.cppreference.com

Its a reference, not a tutorial. But it has everything in a very simple format. Combine that with www.cplusplus.com and its hard to beat by anything else I've seen out there.

www.cprogramming.com is pretty good too.

Re:C/C++

[Anonymous Coward]

http://cppreference.com/ - easy guide to the STL

stack overflow question

[fragbait]

Perhaps this a question for Stack Overflow?

-fragbait

C: K&R.

[proidiot]

For C, use the most holy book:
K&R
(aka "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan and Ritchie, http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/cbook/)

Re:C: K&R.

[mr_mischief]

Make sure to use the second edition, which covers ANSI C (which is practically ISO C89).

JavaScript and ASP

[theverylastperson]

For years I have fallen back on http://itr.org/ for their wonderful Javascript F.A.Q.s

For asp I have fallen on the habit of going to google, typing the object name and 'asp', from there I find http://w3schools.com/ and http://4guysfromrolla.com/ to have the best code samples and descriptions of use. However, I hate navigating both of them so Google has become my default doorway into them.

I'm not ashamed to admit I hit http://experts-exchange.com/ as a last resort.

www.gotapi.com

[YutakaFrog]

http://www.gotapi.com/ It's got all the good reference sites in one. You click the reference site, it adds a tab to the gotAPI webpage. It has a really good search box. No signup required. Best all-in-one reference ever.

Other languages

[poopie]

SNOBOL - http://www.snobol4.org/

Logo - http://el.media.mit.edu/Logo-foundation/logo/programming.html

FORTH - http://www.phact.org/e/forth.htm

Prolog - http://www.logic.at/prolog/faq/faq.html

Algol - http://www.algol68.org/

Lucid - http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Lucid

PL/I - http://www.users.bigpond.com/robin_v/resource.htm

For ASP, ASP.NET and C#

[Anonymous Coward]

Use www.codeproject.com

Perl has by far the best docs

[Christianfreak]

The most annoying thing is having to go on the web to find a doc. PHP is horrifying enough and then you read the docs and find all the exceptions to whatever rule (and the bugs) in the comments.

For Perl:
perldoc -f [function name]

Or perldoc [Module::Name] (also man Module::Name works on most Linux distros)

Also on Linux, 'man perl' gives a list of a whole ton of man pages that give you specific information on regexes, objects, references, syntax, variables, etc.

And if you have to have it in a pretty web interface it is indeed all online
(module docs are as well)

Say what you want about Perl but it has tons of useful modules and it is very well documented.

.NET Languages

[Collegeguy]

For the .NET languages, such as XAML, C#, and VB.NET, I'd have to say that for general data on how to use the function, MSDN is a great resource, between their forums and MSDN online library. Google's also a great resource.

Common Lisp

[quickbasicguru]

For Common Lisp, the Common Lisp HyperSpec is hard to beat, though at times a book like Practical Common Lisp can be a little more useful.

FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use Eclipse you can configure the javadoc URL in your JDK configuration and pull up the pages from within the IDE. VERY handy.

Re:FYI

[BeeRockxs]

Shift-F2 is the shortcut you are looking for in Eclipse.

jQuery

[CaptSaltyJack]

Kinda obvious (no more obvious than php.net being the best reference for php I suppose), but: http://docs.jquery.com/

Re:Scheme

[fracai]

SICP looks interesting, but is it not available in some format more portable than html? No PDF?

Parashift

[D Ninja]

C++ FAQ Lite is an excellent site for C++ information.

Ruby and Rails

[knewter]

For Ruby as well as Ruby on Rails, I like http://apidock.com/. It's the first Ruby/Rails doc site that I've seen that has the ability to contribute, rate contributions, etc.

It also covers when methods changed by tags, so you can see that a method that's giving you trouble was changed the last version of rails, etc. Very intuitive interface.

All-in-one place

[Sargondai]

http://gotapi.com/

They're always adding new languages, and it only takes up one tab. This is wonderful when I'm bouncing from Python to Perl to Javascript to CSS to HTML to MySQL to...

You get the point.

Re:Scheme

[fracai]

Of course I should have JFGI.

http://www.google.com/search?q=sicp+pdf

Lua

[Samah]

Lua:
Official website: http://www.lua.org/
Direct link to manual: http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/
Lua community: http://lua-users.org/wiki/

Re:Scheme

[c0nman]

Quick Ref
QuickRef currently includes: C, C++, CSS, HTML, HTML DOM, Java, JavaScript, MySQL, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby

OpenLaszlo

[spoco2]

My language of use for the past 3 years, OpenLaszlo has brilliant doco right there on the site. With a reference guide that lists all the objects, methods and events with live, editable examples for many.

And then if the documentation doesn't cover what you want, there's the great forums which have helped me out of plenty of sticky coding situations.

The doco was what drew us to OpenLaszlo in the first place. Well, that and the fact it's open source helped a lot!

Here are a few:

[Kingrames]

Java:
http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/

I do a little happy dance in my head every time this site helps me out. it's a bit intimidating until you use it, then it becomes the best java reference you could ask for.

Ruby:

use fxri. in windows, it's not just a live command-line style interpreter, it has a dictionary of relevant terms to search through to boot. it's like having a terminal inside of a reference book, and you shouldn't pass up the opportunity to try it out.

php:
http://www.php.net/docs.php

this one I use every time I use php. Not only does it tell you what everything does, but it tells you what's bugged, and how, and that way you can work around what would otherwise be a nasty problem.

I use these constantly at my job (fxri is the only calculator I know of that can calculate the factorial of 6022, so I use it for all my calculations!) and I hope you find them just as useful as I do.

Re:For all languages

[GFree678]

Hey! Experts exchange isn't so bad once you realize you don't even have to pay to get answers.

Eg. http://www.experts-exchange.com/Programming/Languages/CPP/Q_22118650.html

Skip through the crap in the middle to make you think there's no actual solutions, and the solutions appear at the very bottom. Good work.

Ruby

[SanityInAnarchy]

The official site is always a good bet. But I also make it a habit to memorize the url to the rdoc of whatever I'm doing:

ruby-doc.org/core
api.rubyonrails.org

Beyond that, it's more about the framework. For example:

ramaze.net
sequel.rubyforge.org

Beyond that, there's the source (and IRB + tab-completion), and for the really tough questions, the ruby-talk mailing list.

Can't really recommend the jQuery docs, as they're down half the time, the UI is lacking some critical features, and it doesn't seem to quite work in Konqueror. For a library claiming to be cross-browser, you should at least have your docs be cross-browser!

Re:Scheme

[Anonymous Coward]

gotapi currently includes many many more and has a nice ajaxy interface.

Re:DevGuru.com

[dwarfsoft]

For VBScript I tend to use google to find specific things. I haven't found one site that really covers enough in one place. Most people will write off VBScript being that it is Microsoft and Windows is evil and all that.

Seeing as I use VBScript mainly for natively being able to pull information from LDAP directories from a Windows XP machine I must at least defend it.

MS Scripting Guy, DevGuru, 4GuysFromRolla, and last but not least ActiveXperts.

It depends if I want info on WMI, LDAP, or general WSH Objects.

For VB or MSVC++ its MSDN.

The main source of information just is.

*Ducks*

MS Dev

[MadF0rce]

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library

For .Net stuff (similar to php.net)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/library/w0x726c2.aspx
Check the class library (or search)

Particularly the .Net Framework Library

The other option is to install the Visual Studio library press F1 on an intelisense item ie
System.Web.UI.TextBox and the object pops up in a help window (like back in the good old days of Borland C/Pascal).

ASP Specific (AJAX etc) check the "How do I"
www.asp.net (the learn tab has vids)

Silverlight
www.silverlight.net (vids under learn)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/library/bb404700(VS.95).aspx

For perl and cpan

[tknd]

Specifically search.cpan.org.

Sometimes I browse around to see what I might come up with for new modules. The documentation is awesome because not only is it formatted, but you also can link directly to a specific version, see the installation test report for various OSes for that version, see submitted bugs, other comments and module dependencies.

Re:gExp

[zobier]

http://www.regular-expressions.info/

I'll just leave this here.

Re:Scheme

[halfnerd]

Would you actually rather read the pdf, which can't be reflowed, instead of html, which can be reflowed, if both would be available as a single file download?

At least on mobile devices such as the Nokia N810 I prefer reflowable formats. Actually I prefer them on the desktop also.

ABAP

[anerki]

I generally like http://abap.wikiprog.com/ for ABAP most, though SAP's own SDN works fine most of the time.

Objective-C and Cocoa

[wumpus188]

Almost 300 replies and no mention of Objective-C ?

developer.apple.com - Apple documentation, good reference but sometimes lacking in details
cocoadev.com - Cocoa wiki
cocoabuilder.com - Cocoa mailing list archives

C/C++/Java/Perl/Python references

[phrank]

C
    The GNU C Library
    http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/

C++
    Standard Template Library Programmer's Guide
    http://www.sgi.com/tech/stl/

    Boost C++ Libraries
    http://www.boost.org/doc/libs

Java
    Java(TM) Platform, Standard Edition 6 API Specification
    http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/

Perl
    Perl version 5.10.0 documentation
    http://perldoc.perl.org/

Python
    Python Library Reference
    http://docs.python.org/lib/lib.html

For learning C and C++, I recommend these books:

    Kernighan, Ritchie: The C Programming language
    Kernighan, Pike: The Practice Of Programming
    Koenig, Moo: Accelerated C++: Practical Programming by Example
    Sutter, Alexandrescu: C++ Coding Standards

Re:What about Databases?

[jimdread]

Mysql has manuals online, as does postgresql and Oracle.

Best Python tutorial (at least from my opinion)

[tehnerd]

Well, I was wondering why nobody mentioned it yet, so I'll throw in my 3.14159 cents.

http://diveintopython.org/

a neat and tidy guide, after which u'll end up loving snakes..

na hawedere!

may the alps be with u's

Re:What about Databases?

[ahmusch]

Oracle: asktom.oracle.com for technique/problem solving with SQL.
                  technet.oracle.com or tahiti.oracle.com for documentation.