How about that worst of both worlds, the tutorial where the author starts out writing as if their audience only barely knows what a computer is, gets fed up partway through, and vomits out the rest in a more obtuse and less complete form than they would’ve otherwise?
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Turn on your computer. Make sure you turn on the “PC” (the big box part) as well as the “monitor” (TV-like part).
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Once your computer is ready and you can see the desktop, open your web browser. This might be called “Chrome”, “Safari”, “Edge”, or something else. It’s the same program you open to use “the Google”.
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In the little bar near the top of the window where you can write things, type “https://www.someboguswebsite.corn/download/getbogus.html” and press the Enter key.
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Download the software and unarchive it to a new directory in your borklaving software with the appropriate naming convention.
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Edit the init file to match your frooping setup.
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If you’re using Fnerp then you might need to switch off autoglomping. Other suites need other settings.
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Use the thing. You know, the thing that makes the stuff work right. Whatever.
Congratulations! You’re ready to go!
Sounds like typical Microsoft documentation to me. Explains in great detail what .NET is, where you can download it from, then jumps straight to the advanced topic they’re covering without any of the intermediate knowledge covered or even linked to (but perhaps referred to only vaguely in passing as an acronym, again with no link, this time no link to what “TLA” is actually short for, so you’re searching for it is fruitless as well).
Too real.
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People say “RTFM” then you get to the manual and it’s this
Microsoft Manuals…
Link 1: Pencil selection guide Link 2: Ovals vs. circles Link 3: Wings Link 4: Bird feet
Another problem is that people skim to the “most important bits” without knowing they’re skipping something important. Then some of those people complain how the manual is shit.
I guess it could be shit if it is way too verbose though.
I envy some people’s ability to come up with nonsense words.
Like the Turbo Encabulator
Galabrup, anyone?
I prefer Fizkada more.
This reminds me of the “WHY IS THERE CODE??? MAKE A FUCKING .EXE FILE AND GIVE IT TO ME” post that blew up a while back
https://copypastatext.com/i-am-new-to-github-and-i-have-lots-to-say/
And both boil down to
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guides can be prioritized more in some projects and it might be in the best interest of the creators to do that
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different guides are written for different audiences, sometimes a guide isn’t meant for the average person
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I love the shit out of this. I can relate SO HARD to everything she wrote. It’s like most people don’t understand how to communicate with regular normal human beings
They have even forgotten one of the most basic grammar rules - always fully spell out an acronym the first time you use it. Looking at you MicroSoft (MS). No, I don’t know what TLA* is, and now this document is completely useless to anyone who doesn’t know what TLA is, especially since you’ve also not linked to any resources about TLA
- Three Letter Acronym
As a software developer with 10+ years in .Net. I don’t even bother with Microsoft documentation anymore, it’s often wrong or outdated and skips chunks that even senior devs need.
Me, a (mostly) backend developer, reading a Medium post on how to make your computer display a div using Awesome New Web Framework ™
I swear centering in css is intentionally left as a Lovecraftian mess simply so front end devs can feel superior
Controversial, but: Skill issue.
I do a lot of FOSS work. I dont write docs for everyone most of the timr. I write docs for those already educated on most of the items. This still applies, and is accessible to anyone:
If you don’t know the word, look it up in the dictionary.
I don’t want to downplay frustrations, I know those are real, but most people writing these things aren’t paid.
Note: If a Dev complains their idea isn’t adopted and the docs suck, that’s another story.
Edit: And the article seems to be by a career writer, so it makes sense from their perspective, but some more expansive thinking on their part about how a developer isn’t staffed to do their job, too, would be helpful.
On the flipside I’ve encountered docs that expect the reader to already understand the functionality in order to be able to use the docs. They seem to exist solely as a reminder to those who already know.
There’s a reason I don’t bother running my own mailservers anymore!
Yeah, I use a software that had amazing documentation when they had a publishing company division. When the publisher was gone the documentation is at most a glorified of glossary.
Help on Feature XYZ: Feature XYZ allows you to use FeatureXYZ
They seem to exist solely as a reminder to those who already know
Perfect description of the entire Microsoft .NET documentation, signed, .NET beginner who not only didn’t have a .NET background, but not even a Microsoft programming background (which is also heavily assumed throughout - way to make newbies feel completely unwelcome in your ecosystem!).
Oh man, this I do hate. If you have terminology in your app, that is not a standard, please, please define it.
deleted by creator
How many dictionary lookups deep are people reasonably expected to go? Depending on the reader, there’s just some level of complexity that isn’t accessible any more. Add to that the diversity of mental models and approaches people take and a semantic structure intuitive to you just won’t work for someone else, no matter what words you use. Don’t get me wrong, you can’t cater to everyone and I’m not sure you should if you could.
I understand that your target audience are typically people already familiar with or at least invested in the subject matter, in which case leaning on a presumed funamental understanding and a willingness to fill gaps is sensible. You don’t want to bloat your docs by repeating things your most relevant readers already know.
In doing so, you “sacrifice” the accessibility for less versed people. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to choose and everyone would get an explanation suitable to their own level of understanding and background. Alas, our world imposes limits on our knowledge, abilities, time and energy. Readers and writers alike should be aware of those limits, both in themselves and in each other.
I feel like “Skill issue” understates the complexity of the combinatorics the diversity of human minds produces. It’s a human issue that might never be perfectly solvable. Your solution is good and appropriate, and that has to be enough.
My point is merely that we should be aware of the downsides of our choices and make that tradeoff consciously.
I think you’re spot on, and this is the reason I put “controversial” in front of it. I just felt like if we rewrote the blog post as a “What a writer who’s never learned to program’s code looks like to a developer” it would make no sense, so why should we accept it in it’s current form?
I think you’re spot on, and this is the reason I put “controversial” in front of it.
And I just can’t resist a good invitation for some discussion. Thank you for providing it!
most people writing these things aren’t paid.
I wasn’t paid to write Creating MAUI UI’s in C#. Didn’t stop me from doing a proper job of it.
Others are debating the point about the doc itself, so I won’t go there, but just because you enjoyed doing it, doesn’t mean others do, or have the time.
I happen to write really detailed documentation, because I like to, I like the formality of it. However, as I stated in my other comment my complaint is about the assumptions made in the blog post. Specifically:
I just felt like if we rewrote the blog post as a “What a writer who’s never learned to program’s code looks like to a developer” it would make no sense, so why should we accept it in it’s current form?
Others are debating the point about the doc itself
Most of those others have shown they only read the first paragraph (which is literally the introduction, not the start of the tutorial itself).
just because you enjoyed doing it, doesn’t mean others do, or have the time
I never implied otherwise. I simply used it to show it only takes a few minutes to include pre-requisites for the thing you are writing, compete with links to relevant resources. Microsoft documentation never does either of those things, and those people are paid to write it. Then they ignore your issues that you raise. I forget his name now, but I remember one guy there who did this all the time - would just close your issue and not update the document. I remember one time James Montemagno fixed up an issue I raised, but this other guy, never. I just gave up on raising issues. I’m surprised his name isn’t burnt into my memory with PTSD 😂
The more advanced the level of knowledge on something the more foundation knowledge somebody has to have to even begin to understand things at that level.
It would be pretty insane to in a tutorial for something at a higher level of expertise, include all the foundational knowledge to get to that level of expertise so that an absolute beginner can understand what’s going on.
Imagine if you were trying to explain something Mathematical that required using Integrals and you started by “There this symbol, ‘1’ which represents a single item, and if you bring another single item, this is calling addition - for which we use the symbol ‘+’ and the count of entities when you have one single entity and ‘added’ another single entity is represented by the symbol ‘2’. There is also the concept of equality, which means two matematical things represent the same and for which the symbol we use is ‘=’ - writting this with Mathematical symbols, ‘1 + 1 = 2’” and built the explanation up from there all the way to Integrals before you could even start to explain what you wanted to explain in the first place.
That said, people can put it in “recipe” format - a set of steps to be blindly followed without understanding - but even there you have some minimal foundational knowlegde required - consider a cooking recipe: have you ever seen any that explains how does one weight ingredients or what is “boiling” or “baking”?
So even IT “recipes” especially designed so that those with a much lower level of expertise than the one required to actually understand what’s going on have some foundational knowledge required to actually execute the steps of the recipe.
Last but not least I get the impression that most people who go to the trouble of writting about how to do something prefere to do explanations rather than recipes, because there’s some enjoyment in teaching about something to others, which you get when you explain it but seldom from merely providing a list of steps for others to blindly follow without understanding.
So, if one wants to do something way above the level of expertise one has, look for “recipe” style things rather than explanations - the foundational expertise required to execute recipes is way lower than the one required to undertand explanations - and expect that there are fewer recipes out there than explanations. Further, if you don’t understand what’s in a recipe then your expertise is below even the base level of that recipe (for example, if somebody writes “enter so and so in the command prompt” and you have no fucking clue what a “command prompt” is, you don’t meet the base requirements to even blindly follow the recipe), so either seek recipes with an even lower base level or try and learn those base elements.
Further, don’t even try and understand the recipe if your expertise level is well below what you’re trying to achieve: sorry but you’re not going to get IT’s “Integrals” stuff if your expertise is at the level of understanding “multiplication”.
“That said, people can put it in “recipe” format - a set of steps to be blindly followed without understanding - but even there you have some minimal foundational knowlegde required”
Something that’s quite interesting is that apparently one of the core components of how Latin and Greek used to be taught in fancy public schools (especially in like, Isaac Newton’s era) was that students would be made to copy out sections from classical literature (such as the Odyssey). Obviously this would be happening alongside lessons involving basic grammar, but I’ve seen some scholars suggest that this kind of blind repetition was a key component to the language learning, and that it may even be useful for learning languages in a modern context.
It would be pretty insane to in a tutorial for something at a higher level of expertise, include all the foundational knowledge to get to that level of expertise
You don’t need to include it all. You just need to mention it as pre-requisite knowledge, and link to resources about it for those who don’t have that knowledge. See Creating MAUI UI’s in C#
I get the impression that most people who go to the trouble of writting about how to do something prefere to do explanations rather than recipes
Good documentation includes both. i.e. step-by-step guide, with explanations. See above.
so either seek recipes with an even lower base level
All documentation should cater to all levels. See above.
For “all documentation” to “cater to all levels” it would have to explain to people “how do you use a keyboard” and everything from there upwards, because there are people at that level hence it’s part of “all levels”.
I mean the your own example of good documentation starts with an intro of “goals” saying:
“Visual Studio (VS) does not (currently) provide a blank .NET Multi-platform Application User Interface (MAUI) template which is in C# only. In this post we shall cover how to modify your new MAUI solution to get rid of the XAML, as well as cover how to do in C# code the things which are currently done in XAML (such as binding). We shall also briefly touch on some of the advantages of doing this.”
For 99% of people almost all that is about as understandable as Greek (expect for Greek people, for whom it’s about as understandable as Chinese).
I mean, how many people out there in the whole World (non-IT people as illustrated in the actual article linked by the OP) do you think know what the hell is “Visual Studio”, “.Net”, “Multi-platform Application User Interface”, “template”, “C#”, “XAML”, “binding” (in this context).
I mean, if IT knowledge was a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 the greatest, you’re basically thinking it’s “catering to all levels” when an explanation for something that is level 8 knowledge (advanced programming) has a baseline required level of 7 (programming). I mean, throw this at somebody that “knows how to use Excel” which is maybe level 4 and they’ll be totally lost, much less somebody who only knows how to check their e-mail using a browser without even properly understanding the concept of "browser (like my father) which is maybe level 2 (he can actually use a mouse and keyboard, otherwise I would’ve said level 1).
I think you’re so way beyond the average person in your expertise in this domain that you don’t even begin to suspect just how little of our domain the average person knows compared to an mere programmer.
it would have to explain to people “how do you use a keyboard”
No it wouldn’t. You just link to resources about pre-requisite knowledge.
and everything from there upwards
Nope. Exact same thing applies to all pre-requisite knowledge.
For 99% of people almost all that is about as understandable as Greek
Now scroll down to the pre-requisite knowledge which has links to things explaining ALL of that.
how many people out there in the whole World (non-IT people as illustrated in the actual article linked by the OP) do you think know what the hell is “Visual Studio”, “.Net”, “Multi-platform Application User Interface”, “template”, “C#”, “XAML”, “binding” (in this context)
Exact same number as there is people capable of clicking on the provided links about them in the pre-requisite knowledge section.
which is maybe level 4 and they’ll be totally lost,
…until they read the links in the pre-requisite knowledge, and then they will understand all of it.
I think you’re so way beyond the average person in your expertise in this domain
says person who didn’t even scroll past the introductory paragraph! 😂 You think people try to learn things by reading only the introductory paragraph?? 😂
you don’t even begin to suspect just how little of our domain the average person knows compared to an mere programmer
And yet, weirdly, if you keep reading you’ll find it caters to people who know nothing about it 😂
Cool but nobody’s about to link to prerequisite information like typing on a keyboard. Same for math, a book focusing on integration isn’t going to say “read this book for the basics of addition btw”.
And why should one even cater to that? If a person is interested enough they can just… look up the things they don’t understand, that’s not exactly hard
Cool but nobody’s about to link to prerequisite information like typing on a keyboard.
they say to someone who does indeed link to all pre-requisite knowledge. 😂 You know some Tech people do indeed recommend doing a touch-typing course, right?
Same for math, a book focusing on integration isn’t going to say “read this book for the basics of addition btw”
I’m a Maths teacher. You’ll find that Maths textbooks do indeed run through any pre-requisites for the topic. e.g. “We discussed back in Chapter 2…”.
And why should one even cater to that?
Because it’s useless to a large chunk of your audience if you don’t.
If a person is interested enough they can just… look up the things they don’t understand,
No they just can’t, not when no information at all has been given on what this is so that you have something to search for. See Microsoft doco where they use TLA’s, don’t tell you what the TLA is short for, don’t link to any information about the TLA, and searching for “TLA” (since they’ve not told you what TLA is short for) fails to bring up any information about this thing they are talking about. Now the tutorial is completely useless to you because you have no idea what they’re talking about and can’t find anything about what they’re talking about. “Draw the rest of the owl”
that’s not exactly hard
It’s very hard when you have no search keywords at all to work with.
I Prefer a playbook to a recipe card. The playbook should spell out the goal and the 'why’s of the steps. Because if the process throws an error due to upgraded code etc, then you can be stuck at step one with no path forward. With some playbook annotation you at least know expected out come and why you are running a command etc.
When I have gone to docker hub I always view multiple images and see what their writeup is like. Some just assume you 100% know all dockers subtleties, some have a one liner, but there will be a helpfull soul who spells out what steps to do, and what the best options to set etc. Like a mini tutorial.
I find the mini tutorial to be widely beneficial, because it removes the blackbox nature, and gives new onboarding users a chance to grasp the concepts docker works with.
It’s like the difference between going to a mechanic that has you sit by the coffee machine in the office while they change your brakes and they come back and say “I swapped the new pads in”, vs them pulling up a chair in the shop and explaining the process “here I’m wirebrushing the back of the wheel and the hub, to make sure when it goes back on there is no corrosion debris stopping a parallel fit…now I’m applying high temp grease so that the hub and wheel don’t sieze together from corrosion and make next removal easy”
The info is probably useless to a seasoned mechanic that had a broken hand so had somebody else do their brake work, but highly useful to the next gen of person that can absorb it and know whats and whys.
Yeah, that’s much better.
Personally I detest not understanding what’s going on when following a guide to do something, so I really dislike recipe style.
That said, I mentioned recipes because recipes meant to be blindly followed are the style of guide which has the lowest possible “required expertise level” of all.
I supposed a playbook properly done (i.e. a dumbed down set by step “do this” guide but with side annotations which are clearly optional reading, explaining what’s going on for those who have the higher expertise levels needed to understand them) can have as low a “required expertise level” as just a plain recipe whilst being a much nicer option because people who know a bit more can get more from it that they could from just a dumbed down recipe.
That said, it has to be structured so that it’s really clear that those “explanation bits” are optional reading for the curious which have the knowhow to understand them, otherwise it risks scaring less skilled people who would actually be able to successfully do the taks by blindly following the step-by-step recipe part of it.
That said, it has to be structured so that it’s really clear that those “explanation bits” are optional reading for the curious which have the knowhow to understand them
Yep, totally. This past year I spent a lot of time setting up an LMS with content.
I included sections that were tips, good to know, for awareness, etc.Maybe only 1 out of every 20 users might expand the section, but if they do then there is a clear explanation of why this particular thing functions this way and how to make it work in alternate usecases. Images and explanation, before and after, etc.
It’s like the difference between going to a mechanic that has you sit by the coffee machine in the office …
Good example. I just wanted to add that the place I go to for tyres, if there’s some kind of issue (like with balance or alignment), sometimes they even take me into the workshop (where customers are usually not allowed) to show me what the issue is.
I like her “written by a human” badge. Never saw one before. Gotta say I was wondering, which probably lends to her point.
Yeah, documentation isn’t as good as it could be, and it would increase the accessibility of software if it was better.
You sure that’s a tutorial and not the “about” page of half of github, where you have no fucking clue what the project is about?
asdg a=-do —cd go cd stay —sususudododo baby shark
Imagine a chemistry lab tutorial aimed at 9th grade students getting “as a non-chemist, this reads as gibberish” comments from first graders. Nobody would blame the tutorial authors.
People need to start putting in the effort. There is no such thing as learning for free.
If it’s an instruction to a dishwasher liquid, you better write it for first-graders.
Sure, if you write a documentation to some developer tools, use developer language.
But if it’s something you expect regular folk to use, think of how much more people could use it if they wouldn’t need to learn something entirely out of their field of expertise to use it.
You can make dishwashing liquid kit that would require extensive knowledge in organic chemistry to use. It would be cheap and darn simple to develop. You could release it today! You just…shouldn’t.
Remember people have their lives, and shouldn’t be forced to comprehend everything around them at a professional level. Many developers seem to forget about it A LOT somehow, shifting it to the user and saying “I’m done here”, sitting in the bubble of experts and treating users like stupid rats who can’t simply get a computer science degree to use their computer. As a food technologist, I recently developed a premix for home-baking of phenylalanine-free pastry, and 70% of the work was making it idiot-proof. It is true for any field, yet it is important. People can’t learn everything every time they need something, and it’s not their fault.
use developer language
Microsoft uses Microsoft language, and the only people who understand it are people who have been Microsoft programmers for a long time.
sitting in the bubble of experts
Yep, the Microsoft ecosystem is completely unwelcome to newbies. It’s by experts for experts, and everyone else can go to hell
I haven’t read the article but from the title and header alone, it already reminded me my experience of hosting Lemmy with 0 experience with self hosting. I learned how to start a docker and host a very basic stuff according to docker tutorial, no issue, but as i venture into hosting Lemmy where people keep saying “it’s very easy!”, i keep failing to do so because the tutorial itself written with a lot of jargon and also missing step (i remember running into a part where the tutorial asked me to just fill in necessary stuff. Which necessary stuff???), i eventually given up. Not sure if they rewrite it recently but i can’t be bother with these anymore.
The point here i assume is sometime dev with tons of experience expect people to know what they know, and then written stuff in heavy jargon for the basic tutorial. It’s a curse of knowledge.
“it’s very easy!”
A lot of experienced people say that, and it isn’t to a beginner. The infamous example in Maths circles is “the proof is left as an exercise for the reader”. In other words, “I couldn’t be bothered writing this because I’m assuming you already know how to do it”.
It’s a curse of knowledge
Yep, the people who write the Microsoft documentation assume that the readers know everything they already know.
Imagine a chemistry lab tutorial aimed at 9th grade students getting “as a non-chemist, this reads as gibberish” comments from first graders. Nobody would blame the tutorial authors
I tutor Maths. I have a Year 12 student who has forgotten things they were taught in Year 8, and the teacher has done no revision of it in class. Now guess why this student needs a tutor 😂
People need to start putting in the effort.
The people writing the documentation, yes. They need to say what the prerequisite knowledge is, and include links to it for those who don’t know it (or remember it). Only takes a few minutes to do that. See Creating MAUI UI’s in C#
As a developer, that is also how I read tutorials written by other developers.
I fucking HATE it when the fisterfunk will not talk to the shamrock portal or even send beep-boops back to the Snarfus!
