
Ask HN: Which are the best written tutorials you have seen till now? - msaharia
Starting next year, I am planning to write more well-organized tutorials as a way to increase my rate of learning and understanding (The topics won&#x27;t be of interest to general HN community). But I wanted the see what kind of best practices are appreciated in the community. I am not referring to documentation per se, of which I do plenty for myself during work. But on improving myself as a communicator in the written medium when explaining things through code+simpler language.
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copperx
I'm sure it's a cliche at this point, but I don't think enough writers emulate
K&R's style on The C Programming Language. The prose is short, dense, and yet
not tedious.

Another great "tutorial" to emulate is the TeXbook by Knuth. This one is
verbose, but it shows the reader all the little details and pitfalls about the
software without becoming boring.

~~~
vram22
>I'm sure it's a cliche at this point, but I don't think enough writers
emulate K&R's style on The C Programming Language. The prose is short, dense,
and yet not tedious.

Agreed. It's also very clear, although at least I had to read many paragraphs
more than once to really grok the meaning.

Anecdote: Some years after learning C from that book, and using it a lot at
work, I once conducted a C programming course for 10 to 15 senior devs of the
IT dept. of a public sector company (Hindustan Aeronautics Limited), all of
whom had over 10 years software experience (but not on C and Unix, their
experience was on some mainframe, I think Unisys, and some proprietary
software running on it). I used the K&R C book for the course. I put a lot of
effort into it, and they were pleased with the training. They arranged a small
send-off for me on the last evening, with tea and snacks, the manager of the
team made a brief speech, thanking me (they were that formal kind) and they
gave me a gift as a token of appreciation - a quartz wall clock, which I still
have. Another fun thing I remember from that course was that I asked them this
question at the end of the course:

"How do you write a C program?"

As expected, they were all puzzled. I mean, they had just attended the course,
right? They knew now (some) how to write C programs. No one could think of an
appropriate answer. Then I gave them my answer:

"Very carefully."

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alexeldeib
Kubernetes the hard way: [https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kubernetes-the-
hard-way](https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kubernetes-the-hard-way)

Gave me the necessary understanding of the core layers of a cluster.

The Digital Ocean docs were already mentioned but they're also an exellent
reference source.

~~~
msaharia
These are nice. Thanks!

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2to15characters
Any of the Explorable Explanations that Bret Victor creates. Later followed up
by more from Nicky Case, and more

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msaharia
All the links I clicked led to other websites. Is it an aggregator?

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trendoid
What you saw probably was the collection created by Nicky Case. Check his own
explanations though [https://ncase.me/](https://ncase.me/) and then also check
[http://worrydream.com/#!/ExplorableExplanations](http://worrydream.com/#!/ExplorableExplanations)
(and other explanations by Bret Victor)

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yesenadam
I thought _Eloquent Javascript_ was wonderfully done. Read online here:
[http://eloquentjavascript.net/](http://eloquentjavascript.net/)

Everything by Julia Evans [https://jvns.ca/](https://jvns.ca/) , Arnold
Robbins, Brian Kernighan (e.g. _The AWK Programming Language_ )

More mathematical: Knuth et al, _Concrete Mathematics_ ; John Stillwell,
_Mathematics and its History_ ; Tristan Needham, _Visual Complex Mathematics_

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wglb
This was probably the most effective tutorial I have ever used:
[https://www.amazon.com/RPG-III-400-Shelly-
Cashman/dp/0878352...](https://www.amazon.com/RPG-III-400-Shelly-
Cashman/dp/0878352465)

Early in my consulting career, I got a gig doing RPG III and in three days got
up to speed.

Not relevant to many folks these days.

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msaharia
I'm more interested in exposition style, rather than topics. Is there anything
particular you liked about that book? I'll try to find a PDF for a looksie.

~~~
wglb
It was an unusually clear and understandable tutorial that worked well for
someone not familiar with the machine. Examples that were broken down in very
understandable chunks, expositions of applicable context, very clear non-
jargon language.

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pandeya
[https://internetingishard.com](https://internetingishard.com) \- one of the
best ever tutorials on HTML and CSS.

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lake99
Learn from Kernighan. Most tutorials are dry and teach "follow these steps".
The better ones explain the "why" of the feature. Kernighan comes up with fun
examples to keep the reader engaged.

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martinni
[https://www.raywenderlich.com/](https://www.raywenderlich.com/)

Funny, insightful, plenty of screenshots and very detailed explanations.

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canalli
I really like Mark Myers' style. He writes "A Smarter Way to Learn Bla" books.
His books allow you to turn off your brain and simply sail through.

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msaharia
Thank you. Could you link to some of his online pieces you like?

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utam0k
Go lang turorial. It is very good to learn while running source codes.

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srag_swag
The official go lang tutorial?

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utam0k
Yes. I did not remember tutorial's name, but I found it when I searched. I
think it is easy to understand.
[https://tour.golang.org/](https://tour.golang.org/)

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Jedi72
Digital Ocean docs

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msaharia
Actually a good idea. I have always found them to be precise.

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tsycho
Almost anything on NSHipster

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tuangeek
vimtutor

