Thread by @mcclure111

I really, really hate using software that doesn't come with documentation

UPDATE: After a *lot* of fiddling I have managed to get to reduce the "unknown function code" from 0x935 to 0x7a. Is that better? It's going down. Is going down better?

What I'm trying to do is call this function. This is all the docs I have. Note the lack of a type on "key". In fact, the key MUST be a very special object created by an entirely other npm package, which can itself only be constructed with the output of a third npm package

I've got a 256-byte data blob. I want to pass it to this network function. But it doesn't know how to take data. It only knows how to take fucked up specially formatted *strings* that encode binary as base64 with some two letter header. I can't make the string. I am miserable.

I found an explanation by searching node_modules for "new CID" and finding this weird link. "That's it". What do you mean "That's it"?? Not a goddamn word of this made sense!! Why can't I just give you a byte buffer?!

I solved the difficult and interesting problem at the core of this project last December. I put it aside for 6 months because js made a crash caused by a one-letter typo impossible to debug. Now the project is at risk of failing because nobody in js world documents their shit

So in retrospect, here's what was happening in the above thread.

1. NPM package X publishes an object. This object simultaneously satisfies 3 interfaces simultaneously.
2. The README on github has 5 links. A link to itself, 3 images linking to the 3 interfaces, and a "summary"

3. The "summary" lists the combined information for the 3 separate pages linked by the 3 interfaces, but without certain data, like types.

I couldn't figure out what to do because I couldn't figure out I was supposed to click each banner image until I found the function I wanted

This is infuriating because I suspect if I submitted a bug report offering ways to improve the README it would be accepted, but I'm not actually sure what should be done to improve this. It's clearly a bad approach which tripped me up for a full day, but I can't find a better one