You don't need a tutorial for every-freaking-thing

Re:You don't need a tutorial for every-freaking-thing by flukus on Tuesday August 22, 2017 @09:46PM (#15077890)

> I generally agree with this. Tutorials are most useful when they illustrate the building blocks for larger problems, and when they explain the why along with the how.

This is a big issue I have with a lot of microsofts documentation, they describe the steps in great detail (click this, type this, click that, right-click here) but will often completely skip they why. It's like every tutorial is for complete novice level developers. As soon as you have to do something that veers slightly away from the path you are back to square one.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:You don't need a tutorial for every-freaking-thing by BigJono on Tuesday August 22, 2017 @11:59PM (#15078430)

I feel like this is a problem everywhere. I notice it every day in front-end development. Library/tools documentation almost always open with a "quick start guide", completely skipping over the question of "why". It then goes on to launch into step by step tutorials that are 90% code examples.

Code is nice, but it's hardly the whole story. Very few people seem to be able to explain the "why" behind the solution they're pushing on you. There's so much great code out there that is totally useless because of bad docs, or worse, is constantly mis-used by the community at large because nobody ever stops to ask "why".

[ Parent | on HN ]