*gently grabs the cheeks of all programmers to stare deeply into their eyes*

[starkrg@myside-yourside.net]

@CorvidCrone If you can't describe how to do something with text and have to resort to video links that might disappear in a couple of years, then you've made whatever it is *far* too difficult. No goddamned video tutorials that can't be easily referenced.

[robinsyl@meow.social]

@CorvidCrone DaVinci Resolve comes with a four thousand page manual

[gottox@chaos.social]

@CorvidCrone just give me a few comments in the header file, that's all I want!

[markix@blahaj.zone]

@CorvidCrone@kolektiva.social Ardour has a 119 chapter manual and it's so peak ​​

[juliarez@chaos.social]

@CorvidCrone

Testify!

The two best tech manuals I can think of were the service docs for the BBC micro and the Philips KT3 television chassis.

Modulo the early O'Reilly books, Droms & Lemon, and perhaps the Continuous Delivery book, everything else has been a bit awful.

[jandi@mastodon.social]

@CorvidCrone Do you need a Linux distro? https://mxlinux.org/manuals/

[fbarton@infosec.exchange]

@CorvidCrone Can I add one more qualifier please?

I want it to be accurate!

I can't start to count the number of "fully documented" APIs that I've dealt with where I end up sending in corrections because the documentation is missing critical information

[jeffbronks@c.im]

@JuliaRez @CorvidCrone
BBC Micro docs in general were superb. Partly what inspired me to become a Tech Author.

##bbcmicro #techwriting

[jeffbronks@c.im]

@CorvidCrone
And not a video.

[chloeraccoon@mastodonapp.uk]

@apples_and_pears @CorvidCrone dec manuals did come with the risk of the wall of documentation falling on you @majenko @baljemmett

[furball@tiggi.es]

@CorvidCrone @ahto If you need help just join the discord. Idk what the prob is.

[fragarach@social.vivaldi.net]

@CorvidCrone
Once upon a time I worked for a European electronics company. My bit was a specific area of medical software. They employed a team of technical writers for the user manuals. I didn't appreciate at first just how good the manuals were until I was training a physician with whom I had no common language. In the manual, Chapter 8, section 33.5.8 was exactly the same point in the workflow, explaining the objective of what I wanted to demonstrate.
And the index was an absolute joy to use.

They've probably moved on to using an LLM to write them now

[juliarez@chaos.social]

@jeffbronks

@CorvidCrone

Right? It's been a bit of a while, but you could read the (quite thin) service book, and feel like you could design a reasonable 6502 system on the back of an envelope _and_ be confident that you could fix all the common faults you'd come across.

Books like that should be inspiring rather than distressing. 'I've suffered, and I'm writing this so you don't have to' over 'I've suffered, and now you must, too'.

[bloognoo@retro.pizza]

@Furball @CorvidCrone @ahto
I hope that's ironic.

Discord is an unindexed hole where information gleaned by the communities the company offloaded support responsibilities on to goes to die. I am less likely to use a product or service if yhe only way you find out about it is the discord.
Haxe, a programming language i love is abouttyo release version 5. I can't find any information about the release because all announcements, changelogs and info are inside their discord. Might as well put it on facebook.

[majenko@mastodon.social]

@chloeraccoon @apples_and_pears @CorvidCrone @baljemmett You need DEC document EK-W4LLS-UG - How to extract human from document collapse

[chloeraccoon@mastodonapp.uk]

@majenko @apples_and_pears @CorvidCrone @baljemmett Don't forget the 600 page binder... "How to locate and deal with bugs"

[binder@masto.hackers.town]

@CorvidCrone that would mean the software would have to be correct, and they couldnt' constantly change everything.

[jeffbronks@c.im]

@JuliaRez @CorvidCrone
Yeah. The long version of my reply is "... to become a hardware engineer and then a tech author". The Beeb was the perfect blend of both.

[paavi@mastodontti.fi]

@Kay @CorvidCrone If bug fixes break functionality in a way that makes a rewrite of the instructional manual necessary, that's not ideal. Actually for updates that's hardly ideal either.
Also if you introduce new features along the way, why wouldn't you write instructions on how to actually use those?

[paavi@mastodontti.fi]

@chrisgerhard @CorvidCrone A video can be a useful addition for some people to better understand something, but this should be always in this order: 1. Good manual, 2. Good tutorials, 3. something and anything else. (Those should also be up to date with possible older versions available too, if feasible, in my honest opinion.)