My God y’all can’t just let a joke be a joke if there’s an option for you to be correct instead, LMAO
Edit: I just scrolled through all the comments and saw that the large majority of the replies here are very long, multi-paragraph comments. Y’all ok? Did this post touch a nerve with some of you? LMFAO
Actually!
I went to the comments expecting some more jokes but found multiple dissertations instead wtf.
Yooo, seriousely whats going on?? Hahaha
I think the blogger is more technical than they let on:
- understands how to write footnotes
- structures lists correctly
- runs their own blog with custom domain name.
I’ve known programmers struggle with markdown.
Well that’s because markdown is for documentation, and we all know programmers don’t know how to write documentation.
Documentation goes in the commit message.
That way you know when it was correct, because the next commit immediately makes it stale.
🥲
You can be pretty technical/capable and still write that article (especially if you have technical expertise outside programming). I have never felt so seen.
I worked my way up from arduino -> RasPi -> Debian -> Self hosting quite a few things. I’m very much a hobbyist/novice, but I’m used to learning. It is so hard to read some documentation and understand what something even does sometimes. This goes double for incredibly useful tools for monitoring/implementing other tools. Like I swear I read the kubernetes descriptions 30x before I realized what in the hell it actually does, and now I’m probably about to break my entire home network with it because I think it’s cool as hell.
Also, to your comment specifically: I can get sensors on PCBs I personally made collecting data, throwing it through my own MQTT broker, hosting a dashboard etc, all at a remote site across state lines. I have no idea wtf markdown is. I use yaml for HA stuff with the ESPs, but I don’t know why markdown is a thing and it’s not just python.
And I am 1000% sure there is a very good reason for 98% of this. But yes I found this article hilarious. In my personal circle of hell all nouns end in “-ly”.
understands how to write footnotes
x
The footnotes link to the list instead of the actual footnotes. I was quite confused.
Looks like a case of broken web browser or doesn’t understand footnotes. 🤔
Reminds me of one of my favourite Xkcd.
Although I guess we are more in this one, really.I’m really impressed by people who can write stuff that makes kinda sense, while being complete gibberish. Very funny and y’all need to remember where you are.
as of right now the second xkcd you linked is in an identical format to the newest xkcd. Not relevant to the post, just think it’s cool
The issue here is that the author of that post, and potentially the fictional author of the thing being lampooned, are not drawing a distinction between a tutorial (or an explanation) and a how-to.
Either you want to get a task done, or you want to spend a lot longer learning how to work that out for yourself.
(Many tutorials will include small set of how-to-like instructions because emulating the actions of a master will improve one’s vocabulary of what can be done as well as how it is achieved.)
As a developer, that is also how I read tutorials written by other developers.
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?
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.
No, you’re not supposed to follow years of computer science courses in a university. A good tutotial will provide all prerequisite knowledge for you. Including high school.
I think your tutorial depends too much on your editor UI. It reminds me of those tutorials (often written by Microsoft) where the IDE has changed enough to break the tutorial. This made the tutorial completely useless, because none of them would explain what I actually needed: the magic thing their IDE did in terms of essentials (text files, basic commands), so I could reproduce the effect.
This is different in the unix world, which favors tool-agnostic approaches in terms of text files & basic commands. Even as tooling & technology changes, I can usually look up the meaning of the text & those commands to update them.
That’s the most important I think: not the answer itself, but where the answer comes from, so I can go back there when I need to.
I think your tutorial depends too much on your editor UI
You mean the UI which is specified in the pre-requisites, that UI? 😂 It’s not a bug, it’s a feature - no bloat from going through everything twice (once for VS, once for VS Code). That’s why it’s in the pre-requisites.
It reminds me of those tutorials (often written by Microsoft) where the IDE has changed enough to break the tutorial.
You know I needed to write this because Microsoft hasn’t written a tutorial for this topic, at all, right? That does remind me though, MAUI have changed the parameters for Grids - I better check that part of my tutorial is still valid.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature
It’s a bad one: if I’m unable to get that version of your IDE, the tutorial becomes useless. If it had stuck to programming essentials like the source code & configuration files, then it’d have enduring value as the reader could understand without unnecessary concealment of basic information dependent on an IDE.
no bloat from going through everything twice (once for VS, once for VS Code)
Not implied: the tutorial would properly focus on the programming without IDE complications as it shows the files generated & dependencies linked. (eg, “I did this in my IDE: here’s what it did”.) The reader could in principle use any text editor. It’s not an IDE tutorial.
Microsoft hasn’t written a tutorial for this topic, at all, right?
And you made another Microsoft-grade tutorial: that’s not a compliment.
if I’m unable to get that version of your IDE, the tutorial becomes useless.
No it doesn’t. Clicking on the link gives you the latest version, which obviously is above the minimum version.
without unnecessary concealment of basic information dependent on an IDE
Haven’t concealed anything - it’s there in the pre-requisites
“I did this in my IDE: here’s what it did”
I have many screenshots showing exactly that.
The reader could in principle use any text editor
No they can’t. Several times I cover the Intellisense options which make it easy. This isn’t available in a text editor, hence the pre-requisite of using Visual Studio if you want to follow this blog.
It’s not an IDE tutorial
It’s not meant to be. It covers what you need to know to do what I have done in the blog.
And you made another Microsoft-grade tutorial
Nope! They don’t include pre-requisites at all, never mind links to them, never mind step-by-step processes with screenshots, etc.
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.
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.
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.
If you don’t understand the “problem” part in the “what problem does this tool fix?” Then you probably don’t need that tool. You should probably try the program they mentioned that didn’t fix their specific problem. Since that program probably has way more users and a more entry-level documentation.
TBF, if your step by steps instructions works, it doesn’t matter how complicated the command is.
When it comes to documentation, at least for myself when I’m learning new things, I like to look at it like a recipe book.
The book shouldn’t contain just the ingredients and what the final product looks like. It needs to be more in depth than that. It needs to contain the ingredients that go into it, how much of those ingredients, the time to cook, what consistency to look for, prep time, etc.
There are plenty of people out there who have never cooked before, and a recipe book/instructions on how to cook a favorite dish is the perfect way to share your love of the craft and the dish that you made. Then, with your recipe as a guideline, people could change it to suit their tastes, and so on and so on.
That’s just how I look at it. I wish I could interpret developer instructions and write up a more user friendly documentation for them. I would love to be able to give back to the community in some more meaningful way than just barely knowing what the developer is providing and using it and making a mess of it my first few tries until I learn from my mistakes.
I structure my tutorial docs (I write a lot of them for work) like the O’Reilly cookbook series for this reason.
The problem you’re trying to solve is at the top. Next comes a list of prerequisites for the instructions. Then clear, step-by-step instructions with no more than one command or action for each one, highlighting anything that’s different depending on environment.
Then at the bottom I’ll sometimes add a discussion of why each command does what it does, and finally a list of resources for whatever programs or systems the instructions are about.
Thank you for that. I’m sure the people who read it and got a grasp of what they are trying to accomplish greatly appreciate your going out of the way like that. :-]
Usually it’s to help a customer create a proof of concept going so we can make a sale so it’s not entirely a selfless act.
Plus it keeps me from sitting on hours-long calls trying to walk them through ambiguous instructions.
These days I pretty much just give the code to the LLM and it spits out documentation
Is it prefect? No. But it takes me literally 10 minutes and it’s 90% there
In being slightly facetious here, I do spend some time on it to make it appropriate. But it sure does a good job imo
This is one of those things where I’m actually okay with AI use. I understand a lot of the FOSS community devs don’t have a lot of time for such matters, so if this gets it at the very least 90% there, I would consider it a win! (human review being a big bonus, of course!) :-]
Boop!
I feel that way about pretty much anything these days. The sheer volume of options and the complexity of everything is simply exhausting. Even finding food for my cat is overwhelming.
Oh do grow up, frankly.
When I taught myself to program, there was no internet. You went and bought an enormous, 800 page book (usually written by Charles Petzold) and you hoped to Darwin something, anything would be understandable and lead you to move forward just a little bit.
If it’s worthwhile doing it’s hard.
You recognize the feelings of the author and relate to them personally with Charles Petzold’s writing from back when, and say they need to grow up?
I think it’s a little reductive to say the author just wants everything to be easy.
Help me understand what the author is trying to say, please. It could be I’m missing something. It just reads to me like the author feels everybody else has a responsibility to somehow make complicated topics easy.
a responsibility to somehow make complicated topics easy
That’s what tutorials are for! 😂
Some topics are just complicated. If I write you a tutorial in fast Fourier transforms I can’t start the tutorial at 1+1=2.
I can’t start the tutorial at 1+1=2
But you can put it in the pre-requisites
Of course. But that wasn’t the complaint/satire of the satirist whose article we’re discussing.
Of course. But that wasn’t the complaint/satire of the satirist whose article we’re discussing
I think you’ll find that’s a huge part of the complaint - unexplained terminology. See Microsoft tutorials that never tell you what any of their TLA’s are, nor link to any explanations of them, exactly as is satirised
usually written by Charles Petzold
Classic example of someone who wrote tutorials like the type being satirised.
If it’s worthwhile doing it’s hard
Writing good tutorials isn’t hard. You just have to not assume background knowledge of anything you’re writing about. If you write it for beginners, then literally anyone can follow it.
So maybe the tutorial the satirist was satirising just wasn’t quite aimed at the satirist.
So maybe the tutorial the satirist was satirising just wasn’t quite aimed at the satirist
I think many people here have seen exactly such tutorials - indeed aimed at them - hence the huge upvotes. See Microsoft tutorials that never link to any pre-requisites at all (leaving you looking for a Youtube by an Indian programmer).
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
That is spot on. Usually you would expect the manual to be hit and miss when it comes to troubleshooting but Microsoft is consistently miss, skipping the important parts and details.
Microsofts documentation is also increasingly just outright wrong:
if you spend enough time looking up things about their newer products like M365, defender, or azure, especially when it comes to scripting related to those, there’s a ton of simply outdated info on the official docs that makes it really difficult to figure out why your setup isn’t doing what it’s supposed to.
from changed variable names, to missing functions, to unexplained buttons, etc., etc.
the newer docs are straight up trash!
you’re better off searching around for forum posts or whatever, than using the official docs…
If you are used to documentation like MS’s, then AI responses probably look more reasonable and useful. If AI results look better than your own docs you should feel really bad.
this is the part that’s really frustrating:
i sometimes feel forced to use chatGPT (duck.ai) to simply search for Microsoft things, because search engines only return SEO garbage with the exact same content spammed across like a million “tech tips for beginners” sites…and the docs, as established, are pretty useless…
keep in mind: i fucking hats “AI”.
making me use it makes me not have anything to do with whatever you’re selling.
it’s getting progressively more impossible to simply use MS products, because the information you need to use them is so hidden away!
combine those two things and ta-da: that’s why all my stuff at home is running linux now.
you’re better off searching around for forum posts or whatever, than using the official docs
Yep, that’s why I started the Lemmy .NET MAUI Community - try and reassemble the collective experts who got scattered when Microsoft shutdown the old Xamarin forum - they had been invaluable when I was trying to learn Xamarin from the Microsoft resources.
oh hey, that’s great! thank you!
Microsofts documentation is also increasingly just outright _wrong_:
There used to be a spot on joke about Microsoft documentation taking the piss out of the fact that it was always 100% accurate but at the same time pretty useless. That joke hasn’t been relevant for a while.
It’s so frustrating trying to find out how to do something in one of the admin centres for M365 and you find a Microsoft document with exactly what you need in it only to find out that the UI has changed and the steps don’t work now. Did they move it? Did they remove it? Who knows?
our admins are regularly straight up fighting against this bs!
“where the fuck has this fucked off to now?? it was right here last month?!”
so glad I’m not doing MS administration…
Amazon is no better. Go look up the correct parameter format required to set a compliance lock on an object in S3 via the API. Now try it yourself. Surprise!
Also, requiring login.
Basically Hello World using the win32 API. I believe I first encountered this before college, and it took actually professional dev experience to really understand it.
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.
Exactly what I was thinking. Like needing to understand a huge preamble just to do the Very Simple Thing. I just want to move on, not marry this Linux command.
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).
I think TLA means “Three Letter Acronym” in some circles. So like, DBA would be a TLA meaning “database administrator” for example. Didn’t read the article to get the context though, so not sure if it fits
I think TLA means “Three Letter Acronym” in some circles
Yes, that was why I used it. Microsoft doco is full of unexplained TLA’s - you have to already know what it means and how to use the thing. You knew what TLA meant. Now read the Miscrosoft doco where you don’t know what any of the MS TLA’s mean, and they don’t tell you.
Yes, TLA is a three letter acronym. A four letter acronym, on the other hand, is an ETLA, or “Enhanced Three Letter Acronym”. For advanced cases, you can get an EETLA (or XETLA) for Expanded/Extended Enhanced Three Letter Acronym.
Just so you know.
Too real.
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