Development experience for third party apps

Hello,

I'd like to talk about something that has me frustrated for a while. The nextcloud ecosystem is dependent on third party developers integrating new fabulous applications into the platform and some people actually want to do that. However, at least for me personally, the development experience leaves a lot to be desired. The documentation is the bare minimum and sometimes even outdated while large chunks of new developments in core are simply not accessible to third party developers when just looking at the documentation. People are expected, it seems, to dig through the API docs and make sense of the interfaces on their own. This is a problem in my opinion.

I feel like at the very least there needs to be:

• a thorough refactoring of the app dev manual so that it covers not only the PHP Controller infrastructure, but also caching, system tags, collections, client-side APIs, the vue ecosystem and possibly more that I haven't heard of yet
• some kind of newsletter/mailing list/forum where new developments in core are announced to developers (preferably ahead of time) in order to adopt and integrate them
• a place (online) for developers to share expertise and discuss problems

Start by reviewing the app development manual and the existing API documentation against the listed areas: PHP Controllers, caching, system tags, collections, client-side APIs, and the Vue ecosystem. Map which gaps are outdated or inaccessible to third-party developers, then define the documentation and communication deliverables needed for the issue to be considered complete.