*gently grabs the cheeks of all programmers to stare deeply into their eyes*
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*gently grabs the cheeks of all programmers to stare deeply into their eyes*
All I want is a dry tech manual. A boring, well indexed manual that defines every function. Not a chatbot. Not a training. Not a million "articles" that I have to search through. Not a "community forum".
My rice cooker came with one. I want one for every piece of software I have to interact with.
Go get yourself a technical writer if necessary.
I. Want. An. Instructional. Manual.
The beginning of the end came when they started replacing man pages with GNU info files. Or maybe when they stopped creating GNU info files you could generate man pages from, and gave you man pages with scraps telling you to look in the info files.
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Oddly, you can’t always integrate indexes, because they can be expressing different approaches of understanding. Which is why they are copyrightable: they bring something that can’t be mechanically extracted from the text.
If you keep putting everything in, you get to a concordance (old term) or full text search (new term) and now you’re requiring the reader to construct their approach to understanding.
Oh interesting. A depth of knowledge of the tech of which I was unaware! TIL!
(I was introduced to the term "concordance" by the old #StarTrek Concordance originally produced by Bjo Trimble.
I just learned that there was a professionally published version, but I have the original, mimeographed one. Oddly, it didn't list guest actors, or the eps they appeared in. I put this together myself, from old TV Guide listings. It's two typed pages added in.
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Oh interesting. A depth of knowledge of the tech of which I was unaware! TIL!
(I was introduced to the term "concordance" by the old #StarTrek Concordance originally produced by Bjo Trimble.
I just learned that there was a professionally published version, but I have the original, mimeographed one. Oddly, it didn't list guest actors, or the eps they appeared in. I put this together myself, from old TV Guide listings. It's two typed pages added in.
Ha, when concordances were manual there was a short list of works that got them — Bibles, Homer, Shakespeare — and Star Trek! TIL.
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*gently grabs the cheeks of all programmers to stare deeply into their eyes*
All I want is a dry tech manual. A boring, well indexed manual that defines every function. Not a chatbot. Not a training. Not a million "articles" that I have to search through. Not a "community forum".
My rice cooker came with one. I want one for every piece of software I have to interact with.
Go get yourself a technical writer if necessary.
I. Want. An. Instructional. Manual.
@CorvidCrone I 80% of the time strongly dislike the interactive "tutorial" that pops up while I'm in the middle of intuiting how to do the desired function in the software
I would really rather have a manual where I can look it up if I run into problems
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*gently grabs the cheeks of all programmers to stare deeply into their eyes*
All I want is a dry tech manual. A boring, well indexed manual that defines every function. Not a chatbot. Not a training. Not a million "articles" that I have to search through. Not a "community forum".
My rice cooker came with one. I want one for every piece of software I have to interact with.
Go get yourself a technical writer if necessary.
I. Want. An. Instructional. Manual.
@CorvidCrone This. And some yt-Videos are Not.A.Manual.
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*gently grabs the cheeks of all programmers to stare deeply into their eyes*
All I want is a dry tech manual. A boring, well indexed manual that defines every function. Not a chatbot. Not a training. Not a million "articles" that I have to search through. Not a "community forum".
My rice cooker came with one. I want one for every piece of software I have to interact with.
Go get yourself a technical writer if necessary.
I. Want. An. Instructional. Manual.
@CorvidCrone While we're all here: we gotta knock off the cutesy error messages.
If i see another error message that's just a nerd reference im gonna [REDACTED]
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*gently grabs the cheeks of all programmers to stare deeply into their eyes*
All I want is a dry tech manual. A boring, well indexed manual that defines every function. Not a chatbot. Not a training. Not a million "articles" that I have to search through. Not a "community forum".
My rice cooker came with one. I want one for every piece of software I have to interact with.
Go get yourself a technical writer if necessary.
I. Want. An. Instructional. Manual.
@CorvidCrone linux man pages: 🫥
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@CorvidCrone This. And some yt-Videos are Not.A.Manual.
@maikek if I have to slide back and forth on a YouTube video to see the one specific thing I need, I will explode
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@CorvidCrone While we're all here: we gotta knock off the cutesy error messages.
If i see another error message that's just a nerd reference im gonna [REDACTED]
We just wanna know what went wrong and how to fix it
how is this so hard?? -
Ha, when concordances were manual there was a short list of works that got them — Bibles, Homer, Shakespeare — and Star Trek! TIL.
I mean, in fairness, it was only like 20 pages. I imagine the Professional Version was bigger than that. But yeah!
Important Cultural Touchstones
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@maikek if I have to slide back and forth on a YouTube video to see the one specific thing I need, I will explode
@CorvidCrone people even add unnecessary filling to prolong their videos to the length of pay-worthiness ...
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*gently grabs the cheeks of all programmers to stare deeply into their eyes*
All I want is a dry tech manual. A boring, well indexed manual that defines every function. Not a chatbot. Not a training. Not a million "articles" that I have to search through. Not a "community forum".
My rice cooker came with one. I want one for every piece of software I have to interact with.
Go get yourself a technical writer if necessary.
I. Want. An. Instructional. Manual.
@CorvidCrone I don't have enough soapboxes to empathise fully with your post.
I'm a tech writer and (former?) programmer, with empathy.
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*gently grabs the cheeks of all programmers to stare deeply into their eyes*
All I want is a dry tech manual. A boring, well indexed manual that defines every function. Not a chatbot. Not a training. Not a million "articles" that I have to search through. Not a "community forum".
My rice cooker came with one. I want one for every piece of software I have to interact with.
Go get yourself a technical writer if necessary.
I. Want. An. Instructional. Manual.
@CorvidCrone You are in good company.
I think, related to this, is that I want software to change more slowly. More contemplation. More thought. More pause. One new version per year, thought through with more intentionality.
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@GentlemanTech @CorvidCrone AWS and Cisco, also.
@drwho @GentlemanTech @CorvidCrone AWS IAM docs are a trash fire. Half the examples just shrug and use wildcards. String matching, for access control primitives, because not even the insiders have accurate reference documentation.
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*gently grabs the cheeks of all programmers to stare deeply into their eyes*
All I want is a dry tech manual. A boring, well indexed manual that defines every function. Not a chatbot. Not a training. Not a million "articles" that I have to search through. Not a "community forum".
My rice cooker came with one. I want one for every piece of software I have to interact with.
Go get yourself a technical writer if necessary.
I. Want. An. Instructional. Manual.
@CorvidCrone Have you tried FreeBSD man pages? I wrote a ton of them in 2003.
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@CorvidCrone Oh OK. Sorry to hear that. I thought you were inquiring generally as to who writes "proper manuals"; FreeBSD generally tries to do that with traditional UNIX-style manual pages. I hope you find your tech writer.
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@CorvidCrone Oh OK. Sorry to hear that. I thought you were inquiring generally as to who writes "proper manuals"; FreeBSD generally tries to do that with traditional UNIX-style manual pages. I hope you find your tech writer.
@bms48 I just want programs that average people have to use to come with actual instructional manuals.
Like I said, my rice cooker came with an extensive instruction manual, including what sounds are normal and what sounds are cause for concern.
My Subaru also came with an actual user manual, so years after I bought it used, I can still look up what that suddenly flashing new alert icon is for and address it before it becomes an expensive problem.
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*gently grabs the cheeks of all programmers to stare deeply into their eyes*
All I want is a dry tech manual. A boring, well indexed manual that defines every function. Not a chatbot. Not a training. Not a million "articles" that I have to search through. Not a "community forum".
My rice cooker came with one. I want one for every piece of software I have to interact with.
Go get yourself a technical writer if necessary.
I. Want. An. Instructional. Manual.
@CorvidCrone you used to get these with some pieces of software. Back when software was for CP/M or DOS. What the heck happened?
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*gently grabs the cheeks of all programmers to stare deeply into their eyes*
All I want is a dry tech manual. A boring, well indexed manual that defines every function. Not a chatbot. Not a training. Not a million "articles" that I have to search through. Not a "community forum".
My rice cooker came with one. I want one for every piece of software I have to interact with.
Go get yourself a technical writer if necessary.
I. Want. An. Instructional. Manual.
ahem, is there a manual for mastodon ? bluesky ?
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*gently grabs the cheeks of all programmers to stare deeply into their eyes*
All I want is a dry tech manual. A boring, well indexed manual that defines every function. Not a chatbot. Not a training. Not a million "articles" that I have to search through. Not a "community forum".
My rice cooker came with one. I want one for every piece of software I have to interact with.
Go get yourself a technical writer if necessary.
I. Want. An. Instructional. Manual.
@CorvidCrone A series of promotional learning videos, gotcha. Coming right up
