
You don't need a tutorial for every-freaking-thing - swah
https://goshakkk.name/no-tutorial-for-everything/
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michaelbuckbee
A lot of negativity for this article, but it addresses something I often see
in those just starting out: searching for help in an overly specific way.

You'll find people asking: "How do I create on online store for my candle
making shop?" and you'll point them to a tutorial that happens to use a shoe
shop as an example and they'll think it doesn't apply to their situation.

The article's advocating for people to use tutorials as a jumping off point,
to ask more specific questions and to reason through what does and doesn't
apply to their situation.

Also, fwiw - hats off to the many, many tutorial writers whose articles have
helped me over the years.

~~~
breeny592
One of the most valuable skills I always try to teach junior (and sometimes
not so junior) developers is not only how to abstract your problems (as the
author points out in this article), but also how to follow a related chain.
For instance, let's say you have an issue with some event not firing in an old
browser, and as you research it, you see the same answers saying a concept you
haven't heard of before. Looking that concept up (and either reading about it
or following some tutorial) then teaches a wider understanding in that domain,
instead of a bandaid fix that the developer doesn't understand but fixes the
problem now.

The role of a developer isn't just about solving problems, but to understand
why the solution works as well.

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khedoros1
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_.

With a little practice, you learn how to dismantle a problem, recognize the
elements that make it up, and pattern-match the portions of other problems
that share some elements. You can pull steps out of one how-to guide and apply
them to your problem, "patching" the instructions on-the-fly as necessary.

In fact, if I don't have time to customize an answer for someone's question,
I'll give a summary of how a problem breaks down, and point them to someone
else's tutorials that cover aspects of the solution.

But the key is that in the general case, no one has written a tutorial for
your exact problem. Most of the elements of the answer are already out there,
and they are accessible when you learn the more general skill of decomposing
problems and solutions into their constituent elements, matching problem-parts
to solution-parts, and stitching together the whole fabric of an answer.

~~~
flukus
> 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.

~~~
BigJono
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".

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CM30
WikiHow and HowToBasic disagree and prove otherwise. The wise thing to do here
wouldn't be to ask "is it possible to have a tutorial, any tutorial, let alone
the best, for every X application?" but to look up what people asking for and
write a guide about that particular thing. Free traffic and ad clicks there
and then!

~~~
goshakkk
My objective was not clickbait. I want to help beginners to help
themselves—that's one of the things that will pay them off in the long run.

~~~
whack
After re-reading your article, I think I understand the point you're trying to
make, and it's a good one. The headline and first few paragraphs betray the
real point you're trying to make though. They convey the impression that
you're insulting the people who write tutorials, and the people who use well
written tutorials as a learning tool. Hence why you're getting some hostile
responses here that are orthogonal to the real point you're trying to make.

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tradersam
> A question for you: is it possible to have a tutorial, any tutorial, let
> alone the best, for every X application?

Yes, it totally is. If someone is willing to write one, if someone _wants_ to
write one, that is their prerogative, and it isn't that hard to put it on a
web page.

~~~
acemarke
I think Gosha's point is that a lot of learners seem to want a tutorial that
matches their specific use case 100%, down to the exact set of libraries and
tools and versions that they're using. The more specific a tutorial they're
looking for, the less likely it is that such a tutorial exists.

By learning to break down a problem into smaller pieces and looking for
articles that are more about the principle than the exact identical set of
tools, it's more likely that they'll find something that helps them solve the
smaller individual problems, and thus helps them make progress on the larger
task.

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tehsauce
This attitude does not support productivity or learning. Tutorials sometimes
can be a simple series of steps to follow that avoid actually teaching
concepts in depth but they are useful for two reasons: 1\. Often, you only
want to do something once, and don't care about learning all the details. In
our modern lives, we do so many different complex tasks that saving our time
and minds for the focus of our work is essential for efficiency. 2\. A
collection of weak tutorials, or even just one are better than nothing. Even
if the tutorial doesn't directly explain advanced topics, reading between the
lines on a few simple tutorials is vastly better than having no where to
start.

These simple tutorials are huge wins for everyone's productivity, as millions
of people learn to do the same task every day, you might be able to benefit
from their notes more than you think

~~~
brett40324
The OPs attitude is that when you choose to paint by number, as oppose to
painting with more self reliance, that productivity and learning suffers even
more. There are way too many tutorials that are application specific, and full
of deprecated, bad, and useless implementations.

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EliRivers
I remember when a tutorial was something that required a tutor. A person
specifically trying to help you learn something, help your mind exercise and
develop, guiding as needed and taking pleasure in seeing you make the
connections yourself, tuning your input to support where needed and to let you
soar where you could.

All these "tutorials" are a bunch of steps to follow. Words cheapen over time,
and now we need a new word for it. And soon enough, a mouth-breathing youtube
set of steps to follow will appropriate that word too.

Ah, listen to me. Old man, missing actual tutorials. Oh, how _fast_ it was
possible to learn something with a skilled tutor.

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aaron695
I think you can have one, and it'll be the next education revolution.

Take information about a product/theory, reduce it to parts, then put it
together in a more individualized tutorial.

The AI is not in the what parts bit.

It's in making parts that can fit seamlessly together.

A way, through a known standard, to automatically create fake animations and
people and spoken words from easily edited text.

Such that you can seamlessly slip in info the user doesn't know about and
remove the crap they do (and mistakes, video editing is hard). Borrow parts
from other peoples open tuts seamlessly.

It's a candle store, so search and replace shoe with candle.

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lhuser123
I just want to say thank you to everyone who takes the time to write
explanations and publish them for free, so that people like me can learn. Be
that in the form of good insides like the ones in this article, blog posts,
docs, tutorials, videos, etc.

What most help me is seeing different points of view. Sometimes the first
explanation doesn't make sense, or the next one, but then you find someone who
explains it from a different perspective and that's the one that makes you go
ooohhh!

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SKYRHO_
"TL;DR Spec the result you are aiming for. Break it down into smaller things.
Identify what you know how to do, and what you don’t. Build what you know;
research on what you don’t, and then build it too. Use tutorials to learn the
concepts."

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j45
Tutorials are more helpful for tactics / procedures instead of strategy.

Creating beginners at both is important though, as is helping to encourage
self-directed learning.

