*gently grabs the cheeks of all programmers to stare deeply into their eyes*
-
@drwho @CorvidCrone maybe, I never used most of those too much. But old CAD and CAM software was *bad*. Simulation / scientific software even more so. Sure if your previous standard was batch processed hand punched FORTRAN they were all usable but a lot of companies really showed that they were trying out these newfangled GUIs for the first time and spend all their money on the shiny interface and none on fixing bugs.
@dequbed @drwho @CorvidCrone pleasingly the ANSYS of 2007 came with a manual that told you everything that every function and setting did. Those were the days of the GUI mostly being a tool to write a text file for the computational bit.
-
*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.
<whiny voice>
"Bbut instruction manuals are haaard."
Extra steps that are important:
1) Have that technical writer's work vetted by the people that wrote the software.
2) Bare minimum make the manual available as a PDF, ideally a printed on paper manual TOO! -
@gilesgoat @CorvidCrone I was so lucky in my first job: my cubicle was right next to all the shelves of VMS and other OS docs. Nice to browse through during the two-hour compile times.
-
*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 GNU Info manuals are good
-
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.
@resuna @CorvidCrone Info manuals are strictly superior to man pages though.
-
@resuna @CorvidCrone Info manuals are strictly superior to man pages though.
More verbose, anyway. Harder to use as references. Like the difference between a document and a website.
-
*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
Most sane take on the fedi in a week. -
@dequbed @drwho @CorvidCrone pleasingly the ANSYS of 2007 came with a manual that told you everything that every function and setting did. Those were the days of the GUI mostly being a tool to write a text file for the computational bit.
@cyancqueak @drwho @CorvidCrone yeah, a bunch of software just uses GUIs for nicer setup of the batch processing pipeline. Those are all fine, turns out we have by now figured out batch processing
Biggest issue with batch processing is the very slow feedback cycle for errors, but that's solved by aiming for slower churn and more slack for unexpected errors and any work envionment that does that is better off for it anyway ^^ -
@gilesgoat @CorvidCrone I was so lucky in my first job: my cubicle was right next to all the shelves of VMS and other OS docs. Nice to browse through during the two-hour compile times.
@oldmankris @CorvidCrone Actually I was in the room where they had the shelf with the VMS manuals
Which was a sort of 'storeroom' where we were in 3 people in. I used to work at that time with systems that came with 'massive HW manuals' and we had to write SW for and I mean those type of manuals where even the panel screws were listed and had a code like 0039-11537528 or such 
Mind you often some manuals were sold separately at high price. I remember things like the X.25 book and such .. -
*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 Compassionate fucking Buddha this!
-
*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 preach it brother preach it loud ++
-
*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.
One year, long ago, at Comdex, a local firing range offered the chance to shoot anything inanimate with the heat of your choosing.
The top draw was IBM manuals, with Uzis.
Just saying'
-
Ha, when concordances were manual there was a short list of works that got them — Bibles, Homer, Shakespeare — and Star Trek! TIL.
@clew @cavyherd @CorvidCrone I learned about concordances from Strong's Bible Concordance...a huge, hardbound volume, bigger than any Bible I ever possessed.
-
@clew @cavyherd @CorvidCrone I learned about concordances from Strong's Bible Concordance...a huge, hardbound volume, bigger than any Bible I ever possessed.
"Dude! You think there's a lot of data? Just wait until you see the metadata!"
-
*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 if like to add a note to this if I may ?
I don't want to watch a fucking YouTube video either
-
*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 yes. I want to look on a simply organised manual. And if it's translated from another language I want for them to have stumped up for a proof-reader who's actually familiar with English as it's used. Just to tidy up the sometimes sort of correct but strangulated usages.
-
S simonjust@mstdn.dk shared this topic
