SmartmanApps

joined 2 years ago
[–] SmartmanApps@programming.dev -1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (6 children)

I’m sorry dude, but the other person is completely correct

No they're not.

You don’t explain a lot of things

You mean all the things that have links to resources about them in the pre-requisite knowledge section? 😂

For example Git and GitHub are both prerequisites that you don’t mention

Now go read through the links in the pre-requisite section. Also, they're not pre-requisites - it isn't necessary to know how to use them, given cloning the repo is optional - hence not listed as pre-requisites. See how that works?

Knowledge of layout is also a prereq

No it isn't. I specifically cover exactly that. I see you didn't read it.

You don’t explain what binding is.

Yes I do! 😂 As do the links in the pre-requisite knowledge. Again showing you didn't read it

There’s a ton of typos.

says person not identifying any

You missed putting certain things in code blocks

You ever tried doing that on dev.to? Guess what? There's no tutorials for it! 😂 (the thing they said to do doesn't work)

You should every once in a while show the full class or file so the reader knows what they missed

It's done at the beginning. Also there's the repo. Again showing you didn't read it.

There’s a lot that could be improved here.

says person with made-up criticisms from not having actually read through it.

It’s hard to write a tutorial.

No it isn't. Assume the reader knows nothing.

[–] SmartmanApps@programming.dev 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

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.

[–] SmartmanApps@programming.dev 2 points 6 days ago (4 children)

a responsibility to somehow make complicated topics easy

That's what tutorials are for! 😂

[–] SmartmanApps@programming.dev 3 points 6 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] SmartmanApps@programming.dev 1 points 6 days ago (2 children)

And you don’t need to warn me that an “s” is coming.

No idea what you're talking about.

you have no experience with that particular thing

In other words, you are a beginner with that particular thing.

It’s not for someone who has never used any of those technologies

It might be if that is what they are needing to learn. Reading tutorials is usually needs-driven. Think inheriting legacy code

doesn’t understand anything about them

You know that's what tutorials are for in the first place, right?

Ah, I can see you never write tutorials,

Ah, I can see you've never written any good tutorials

You have no idea what you’re talking about

Says someone who just said someone with no experience at something is somehow not a beginner with it 😂

[–] SmartmanApps@programming.dev -4 points 6 days ago (10 children)

I’m sorry to tell you, friend, that your article does this too

Nope.

You don’t explain what XAML is, for instance

You know the article is about how to write a page and NOT use XAML, right?? 😂 If you don't know what it is then you don't need to (hence why I point out that it isn't pre-requisite knowledge). If you do know what it is then that's probably what brought you to my page to begin with - stop using it! 😂

Certain sentences almost read like the satire you posted:

Now read the links provided in the pre-requisite knowledge. You're the second person who thinks people learn things by reading the first paragraph only.

You also tell the reader to “edit the relevant line” which doesn’t help a total beginner

Now read the links in the pre-requisite knowledge, clone the repo, follow the instructions up to that point in the article, and guess which line you're on! 😂

I’m sure you’ll get there eventually

It's there already, if you had just bothered reading it all and following the instructions, instead of just criticising without even trying it

Just keep in mind that most people do not want to be technical writers

Probably because of people like you who criticise them without even trying to follow the directions to begin with. I'm guessing you also submit issues which say "It doesn't work. Please fix"

[–] SmartmanApps@programming.dev -3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

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 😂

[–] SmartmanApps@programming.dev 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

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.

As a software developer with 10+ years in .Net.

I was forced to try and use it as a brand new to Microsoft (not just .NET, all of Microsoft) programmer (my experience was in other ecosystems). Not recommended.

“first, install npm and npx and npy and npppp2 and then run ‘npz create-huge-boilerplate-folder’. Now go edit arbitrarily_named_file.yaml to add requirements a, b, and banana. Now you can edit path/to/hidden/entrypoint.jsx to return ‘Hello, World!’ and then run ‘npz bloated-dev-http-server’ and navigate to http://127.0.0.1:9001/index to view it! Simple!”

Yep, Microsoft doco is like that too

There’s amazing

IBM

and terrible manuals everywhere.

Microsoft

[–] SmartmanApps@programming.dev -1 points 6 days ago

that you already put in more effort than one can expect by writing a tutorial to begin with

Nope. If a job is worth doing, it's worth doing well.

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