Writing Documentation: Teach, Don't Tell

Programmer Steve Losh has written a lengthy explanation of what separates good documentation from bad, and how to go about planning and writing documentation that will actually help people. His overarching point is that documentation should be used to teach, not to dump excessive amounts of unstructured information onto a user. Losh takes many of the common documentation tropes — "read the source," "look at the tests," "read the docstrings" — and makes analogies with learning everyday skills to show how silly they can be. "This is your driving teacher, Ms. Smith. ... If you have any questions about a part of the car while you’re driving, you can ask her and she’ll tell you all about that piece. Here are the keys, good luck!" He has a similar opinion of API strings: "API documentation is like the user’s manual of a car. When something goes wrong and you need to replace a tire it’s a godsend. But if you’re learning to drive it’s not going to help you because people don’t learn by reading alphabetized lists of disconnected information." Losh's advice for wikis is simple and straightforward: "They are bad and terrible. Do not use them."

Comments

Docs vs tutorial

[dfsmith]

There's a difference between a tutorial and documentation? Who'd have thunk!

Re:Docs vs tutorial

[lgw]

WHile the difference between a textbook and a reference manual should be obvious to all, TFA still has a point: good documentation should include both.

Most docstrings I see are worthless: they add nothing to the code right below them. OTOH, a bit of tutorial-style documentation with examples can be golden. Often that makes well-written unit tests the best docs, or at the very least, if you're going to provide examples, they should also be unit tests - another test is always nice, plus you know your examples actually work.

Re:Docs vs tutorial

[dgatwood]

There's a difference between a tutorial and documentation? Who'd have thunk!

Actually, no there isn't. A tutorial is one type of documentation. Tutorials are documentation for processes. Non-process subjects require other approaches. It is important to write the right types of documentation based on the likely audience and the subject matter.

I disagree with many things in this article, not because the points are invalid, but because they conflate misuse of tools with low quality of tools. For example:

Wikis are great tools for writing documentation. They make it easy for people to fix minor errors when they notice them. They make it easy to collaborate on documentation without having to deal with the relatively high overhead of source code version control systems (which are particularly awful when merging structured content like XML and HTML).

What the author is complaining about is not the wiki, but rather the fact that those projects have no one who is responsible for maintaining the documentation. If no one is responsible for writing the docs and ensuring their completeness, the documentation will inevitably be half-finished, whether they use a wiki or some other mechanism. The wiki is not an alternative to writing documentation, but rather is a tool for creating documentation.

Doc generation software is great for writing reference documentation. By placing the content into the source code, it becomes the responsibility of the programmer to update any behavior changes when they modify the behavior of a function. It also means that the documentation for the function is easily readable right there in the source code when you're trying to understand a function. By producing the generated documentation, you then have a convenient reference for all your functions, methods, classes, data types, etc. that is readily searchable, indexable, and (perhaps most importantly) is viewed in a separate app or window from your source code so it doesn't force you out of your coding flow when you need to look something up.

Once again, what the author is complaining about is not the doc generation tool, but rather the fact that those projects have no one who is responsible for writing the documentation. When used properly, the output of doc generation tools is every bit as good as documentation produced by hand. However, it takes exactly as long to write that documentation in the source code as it does to write it in a word processor. It is not a tool for saving time, but rather a tool to aid in maintaining consistency between behavior and documentation.

To do software-generated documentation correctly, you need to add comments that explain every field in every data structure, every class, every function or method, and for particularly complex functions, even documentation for many of the local variables. You should write code in your build system to warn about undocumented methods and data structure fields. For example, in one project I regularly work on, there are almost 17,000 lines of documentation comments out of just shy of 59,000 total lines of code—a whopping 28.8% of the total code volume. The result is that it is fairly easy to learn what each piece does in the context of the code while you're looking at it, and the automatically generated documentation is pretty thoroughly fleshed out reference documentation for the project. One particularly complex class by itself produces a whopping 72 pages of reference documentation.

The problem that folks run into is that they usually don't put in any doc comments at all, or at best don't actually take the time to write the thorough comments that are needed to make the output from automatic reference documentation tools be useful. As a result, when you build the reference docs, you end up with an empty skeleton that isn't of much value at all. This is not a flaw in the tool; it is a flaw in the development team. They didn't take the time to write the documentation.

And so on.

Um, no

[grasshoppa]

From TFA: The purpose of technical documentation is to take someone who has never seen your project, teach them to be an expert user of it, and support them once they become an expert.

No. Experts in their field shouldn't need to be taught how to understand your system; that's part of being an expert ( or indeed, even a professional ). All documentation should be doing is explaining the sticky bits and providing details and/or examples ( whichever is relevant ).

Just my opinion of course. But having stepped in to countless networks/codebases, I can tell you that I just get annoyed when the documentation gets in the way of the information I need to complete my job.

Re:Um, no

[murdocj]

No. An expert may be an expert in an area, but until he's familiar with your code, he's not an expert in your system. I've spent way to much time deciphering code where a single sentence explaining what the hell the code was doing would have saved time. If you had enough time to write the system, you have enough time to document it. And if it's hard to document, that's a hint that it's a crappy system.

Re:Um, no

[DuckDodgers]

I write extensively on the wiki at work. I can't teach someone else to be as good as I am at my job just by reading books. Outside of the rare incredibly intelligent person, for most learners at some point you have to try things for yourself in order to genuinely understand them.

What I am trying to do is provide a Howto for every task I do routinely. I've got a page of links in alphabetical order with duplicates (i.e. "Database Setup" and "PostgreSQL Setup" both take you to the same page.) Each wiki page is in this form "Step 1: pre-requisites. Your computer must be on the office wired network or connected to the VPN." "Step 2: You must have the following programs installed." "Step 3: Open.... and type or paste the following... " "Step 4: In step 3, if the result was X, go to Step 5. Otherwise, go to step 6."

The goal is to make it so a tenth grader with basic computer skills and reading comprehension can handle all of the mundane tasks and I can be left alone to work on the more advanced projects. So far, no luck. If anything breaks, it's easier to contact me than try to fix it on your own. That's fine right until I turn in my two weeks' notice... which happens tomorrow. I used to worry that nobody else in IT understands what's happening in sys-admin or network-admin roles. But I spent the last three years putting a step-by-step guide for just about everything I can think of down, and asking and later begging people to try it out and report errors. At this point I don't care any more. They want to test my instructions after I am no longer available to fix errors, that's their problem.

Re:Um, no

[__aaltlg1547]

Seriously, you ARE the problem. You're arrogant and fucking lazy.

Fuck the users if they don't already know everything there is to know about everything. They should already know how to use my code even thought I just wrote it and it's novel and interesting and they should be honored just to have the privilege of using my code. Who do they think they are to ask what it's for or how to use it or how it handles errors?

Re:Source code

[Entropius]

Do you really want to read the source code for ssh every time you forget whether it's -p or -P to specify the port? (It's one for ssh and another for rsync...)

The web and hyper text are a challenge

[EMB Numbers]

As an author of three successful dead-tree programming books, I have a few observations.

1) I use the electronic versions myself because of easy search (better than an index) and copy/paste.
2) In book format, it's possible to lead a reader through topics in a sensible order that builds on prior topics.
3) The challenge with electronic/on-line documentation is that there is no expectation that readers will approach the material in any particular order. Readers type a search term into google and up pops a page or two of documentation. How can the author make safe assumptions about the definitions of terms and prior conceptual knowledge the reader will have? Adding links to the definitions of terms and links to chapter oriented conceptual documentation doesn't usually help because readers are impatient, and there is no good place in the middle of the documentation to start.
4) Many readers don't know the terms to type into google and therefore aren't lead to the relevant conceptual documentation even if they would have read it had they known.

Re:The web and hyper text are a challenge

[EMB Numbers]

As a university instructor, I disagree. Many subjects are presentable in sensible sequence with knowledge neatly building on prior knowledge. The entire curriculum is created with prerequisite and co-requisite courses. Attempting a 400 level class without having mastered the 100 level course content is a recipe for pointless struggle.

Wikipedia is a great resource. It's articles are self contained and generally rely only on general knowledge. Wikipedia is not a good source for delving deep into subjects.

Having said that, I use wikipedia extensively. There is almost an entire Computer Science undergraduate curriculum in there. t still requires a guide. There are still sensible paths through the information. Here is a great example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_heap In the context of a Data Structures course, that is a great page. What benefit would that page provide to somebody who has never programmed and doesn't know what a data structure is? You can follow links to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heap_(data_structure) and then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure and then you are directed to dead-tree textbooks that explain the topics in a sensible sequence.

Re:The web and hyper text are a challenge

[__aaltlg1547]

Table of contents.

A common language

[jackb_guppy]

The article misses something critial - the use of common language.

The biggests example of this is HIS use of "user". A "user" for all my time in this business is the person sitting in front of the computer using the software to preform a business funtion... not programming a business function.

This leads to second issue a developer is person that uses an embedded function written by another developer - generally with a higher skill or at least akill peaked before the new developerl. That developer is trying to come up to speed about cause and effect of using a given piece of code and trusting the original developer actual did his job right.

How can you trust a person that says what documentation is to be, that cannot teach it following his own rules? The first rule of any teaching is placing terms that you are going to be using, to teach the others what you mean. You see this legal documents to prevent confussion of common terms being used in a more defined or limited manor.

Stack Overflow

[EMB Numbers]

In my opinion, Stack Overflow is most often the blind leading the blind. There will be 20 wrong answers, 10 answers to the wrong question, 2 suboptimal solutions, and if you are in luck there will be 1 good solution. Now, tell me which is which. It seems to me that the good answer is almost always buried under crap.

Stack overflow questions are often badly stated and difficult to find with more correct search terms. If you don't even know the search terms, the site is useless.

There have been a few times when stack overflow saved me a lot of time. There have been many times when stack overflow has been a pointless time sink.

Re:Stack Overflow

[timeOday]

Well, I am going to defend Stack Overflow here, because I think it fills a very useful niche, which is "what is the best way to do X." There is no way that a "single-source" documentation, such as the API documentation or a book, can foresee all those specific questions. I do not go to stackoverflow to search for information, but very often when I use google to search, stackoverflow has the first useful information. As opposed to a straight wiki, what makes it useful is the (slashdot-like) moderation system.

Re:Stack Overflow

[PRMan]

Um, that's why people VOTE on the correct answer. One of the top 2 answers is virtually ALWAYS the correct answer (usually 2 ways of solving the same problem that you can choose from).

Re:Stack Overflow

[snowraver1]

Sometimes when you are out of ideas, even a wrong idea can be a help.

Re:Stack Overflow

[real-modo]

Well, I am going to defend Stack Overflow here, because I think it fills a very useful niche, which is "what is the best way to do X."

closed as not constructive by XxxxxX Sep 29 '11 at 13:29

As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.

Re:Stack Overflow

[Anonymous Coward]

People who can't tell good answers from bad upvote bad answers.

Same thing happens here. This is how your previous post got modded up.

Re:Stack Overflow

[turbidostato]

"There will be 20 wrong answers, 10 answers to the wrong question, 2 suboptimal solutions, and if you are in luck there will be 1 good solution. Now, tell me which is which."

The one that makes sense, of course.

If you can't see what the proper solution is at a glance, then Stack Overflow may seem that it's for you but, believe me, it's not.

Re:Stack Overflow

[dkf]

The blind leading the blind. People who can't tell good answers from bad upvote bad answers. Try searching for some topic that you know a lot about and see what I mean.

I've seen a lot of things said about Stack Overflow, but this has been something that's consistently said that I've never been able to substantiate. I've seen questions with no good answers where some of the poor ones have received some upvotes, but where there's an actual good answer — something that you can check for yourself because a good answer will be one that includes a description of what to do — it tends to attract upvotes over time. (Which answer is accepted is more variable, as that's the gift of the person asking the question.) While there's a bit of cult following going on (i.e., voting someone up because of who they are) it is relatively rare because most of the highly rated people are that because they tend to give good answers.

Typically, where a question has what you think are bad answers receiving upvotes, that's either because you've misunderstood the question (duh!) or because the question itself was poorly asked. Which sucks a lot but happens. If you think you can provide a better answer than the ones that already exist, then write that answer and don't whine about it! (Bear in mind that good answers can pull in reputational increases over a number of years; one of my answers from 3 years ago pulled in a vote yesterday. It's a long-haul game.)

Re:Stack Overflow

[coolmadsi]

Well, I am going to defend Stack Overflow here, because I think it fills a very useful niche, which is "what is the best way to do X."

Most of the time I use Stack Overflow is after pasting an error message into Google and it coming up towards the top of the results. The responses are usually reliable, although I have found a couple of unanswered questions.

'help'

[globaljustin]

a difference between a tutorial and documentation

I agree with your superficial point...who would have thunk it indeed

However, I think it is still a distinction without a difference, one that only causes more confusion.

You and I know what 'documentation' in the computing sense means, but it's not a logical concept for a non-techie.

'documentation' in computing can be as simple as the coder showing his/her work and making a formal log of changes and bug reports/fixes

however, and here is where the problem happens...what constitutes 'sufficient documentation' for a coder is *not* sufficient for a user!

the problem is, that to bridge the gap, most programmers (who are not at all schooled in education theory & by nature tend anti-social) must create some sort of 'document' beyond the 'documentation' for the end user

sometimes this takes the form a 'tutorial'

a 'tutorial' is not full instructions...it is a real-time step-by step *demonstration* which may have supplimentary material that is actually instructions

ex: I can make a video with the steps to start a car, put it in gear and how the brake and throttle work...a person, with *nothing* else but that video and factory plans of the car *could* learn to use it...but calling a basic video and factory plans 'instrucitons' is insulting!

'documentation' can be helpful

'tutorials' can be helpful

'help' menus can be helpful

even so, its not a full user manual that an end user in other industries would expect

the computing industry has decades of work in this area I fear...so many have gotten used to doing it a bad way

Re:'help'

[Chatterton]

That is so true. I have stopped counting the number of library/API I have not used because I was unable to put the pieces together due to bad documentation. I had to use other library with less functionalities but having all the documentation needed to start using them and explaining how they worked. For example, i have chosen to use Guile over Lua (At the time Lua would have been more easy to use for me than Guile) because at the time I made the choice, the Guile documentation was better over how to integrate it with your programs and i did found a list of do and don't explaining what you should do and you shouldn't do. This last point in itself was the best thing ever really saving me from lots of headaches.

Re:'help'

[b4dc0d3r]

Petzold, Prosise. Two examples of good documentation. K&R, a different approach.

Wrox, how not to do it.

Go forth and multiply.

Re:A common language

[PPH]

peaked before the new developerl.

Freudian slip much?

Worst car analogy ever

[simishag]

Since when did the car owner's manual teach the owner how to drive?

I work for an airline. We train pilots on our aircraft and our procedures. We certainly do not teach them how to fly.

Re:Source code

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate you! You're one of those co-workers that urgently e-mails me at 1AM in the morning asking me how to use some utility I wrote. In the morning I reply, "Use the -h switch, you mother f*cker." Followed by my usual disclaimer--"Every utility I write has an -h switch, which describes the switches option-by-option, followed by short description of the function of the utility, plus gives links to additional documentation."

And if you think you're going to find the -p switch in OpenSSH source code, good luck. Option argument handling is strewn about in several different files. I know, because I've had to hack on it and add options, as well as fix the parsing of forwarding option arguments, among other things. I've seen worse, but it's a long way from some utilities, where getopt and getopt_long processing is concise and easily readable.

Pro tip: readable source code has nothing to do with methods, classes, functions, or variables per se. It's the overall structure that counts, even if it's a single 10,000 SLoC function. Most C++ apps are harder to read than a gigantic ASM app.

Most people organize their code by what it literally does--by the components they learned in school or a textbook. They tediously breakdown blocks into a myriad functions and classes based on their algorithmic role. Or they farm out "parse_int", but then have a 200-line chunk of code processing a dozen different kinds of ints (ints for timeouts, ints for userid, etc).

I don't have many simple tips for alternatives. I just know that most people are doing it horribly wrong. I like to think my code is fairly easy to read--and people have told me that--but I know I could get better.

Okay.. one simple thing people could do more often--use fewer source files, fewer classes, etc.

Also, people abstract too early, before they understand what the meaningful abstractions are. So they end up with too many abstractions, creating too much complexity. People should begin to write their applications as quickly as possible, without worrying about structure--just functionality. It's only until you're about one third or even halfway through that you have an idea of how the whole application should be structured. That's when you start over, before it's too late to re-architect, but after you have a concrete idea of what's necessary and what's superfluous.

Re:Documentation vs Tutorial

[snowraver1]

One problem I encounter all the time is what level of competence should be assumed? If I write "try ping host xyz" should I assume they can successfully pingtest something and interpret the results? For ping, yes maybe I should assume that, but what about grep? Grep isn't officially supported by the organization so...

I feel like I'm wasting my time writing instructions for simple tasks, but I also feel that I have to write as I though a monkey is the intended audience. I hate to say it, but it's the godawful truth, that there are too many people in IT that can only read-and-do.

Re:Source code

[snowraver1]

-h? Next time, use all three of these: -?, -help, --help. I'm probably not going to try throwing -h at a program without having a clue what it might do.

Re:Source code

[lgw]

Command line utilities should print their documentation for any unrecognized or erroneous command line arguments (unless that's so lengthy they need to only print a subset).

There's also something to be said for selling

[istartedi]

There's also something to be said for "sell, don't tell". I seem to recall that the Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Manual was written as if they were enthusiastically pitching the product. For some reason, it was much easier to retain the information when the author gushed about it.

Re:Driver's Manual

[m00sh]

My last owner's manual was about 400 pages; but contained only about 10 pages of useful information.

10 pages of useful information to you maybe. Other people will find some other 10 pages useful.

My mathematics textbook is 600 pages but there is only 1 page with the information that I need to solve a problem. Doesn't mean the book has only 1 page of useful information.

Not all wikis are Wikipedia

[Idarubicin]

Reading the linked article, it is clear that this blogger is conflating two concepts: "wiki" and "let's leave a big blank space on the open interweb and hope that the magical crowdsourcing fairies will deliver us brilliant and complete documentation!"

To be honest, when I say that "not all wikis are Wikipedia", I'm still being a bit unfair to Wikipedia. Even that project - which puts, for all practical purposes, zero dollars into content creation - still has recognized that at least some regulation is a good thing, and that even if you give everyone read access, you don't have to give everyone write access. Further, with their Pending Changes process, not all changes to a page go live immediately--for certain pages a reviewer has to approve edits before they appear on the outward-facing Wikipedia article.

A private company or organization can appoint gatekeepers to control who can edit what, and who can approve changes. Moreover, they can pay people to edit documentation, and can impose requirements and standards across the project. Wiki software can provide a lot of 'back-end' support for creating complex, multi-page, potentially multi-media documents, using markup that is relatively straightforward to learn. It can provide clear, complete records of who changed what, when--and who is responsible for breaking stuff.

Sure, waiting for people to randomly show up and write documentation, and then accepting everything they give you without any validation or quality control is a recipe for failure. But that's not the only way to use a wiki. Linus doesn't let just anyone check stuff into the kernel.

BD, DT, and wrote TFMs it'snot rocket surgery

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

I've been writing technical documents since the early 1970s.

You can't expect one piece of documentation to serve everyone ... it's like buying a "vehicle" and trying to use it to race, haul hogs, and climb Pikes Peak.

A - Ordinary users don't give a shit how the stuff works, they want it to do something for them ... tell them how to make whatever it is work as a tool for them. Run through the common use cases, screen by screen, showing them how to make the widget-smasher do it's thing.

Start with things the way they should work, then give them some basic troubleshooting, maintenance, etc.

B - Administrative users: They need all of "A", and how to handle the other users. Add, remove and monitor users.

Start with things the way they should work, then give them some basic troubleshooting, maintenance, etc. for the added functions.

C- Service techs, sysadmins, and those who will touch the sacred code: All of A and B (be reference to the appropriat4e manual or section thereof) and then feel free to pile on the technocrapobabble.

Each detailed explanation should start with a very brief "statement of purpose" ... when will this command be needed, or what does the bit of machine do. Why would you use it?

Then explain how to use it, and the expected results if you used it right, the expected results if you screwed up, and how to recover from an error.

========
You need to explain for each level of user what happens to a transaction, or data, or a part being manufactured, as it passes through the process or the proigram ... chronologically, what touches it and what is supposed to happen?

What will you see if there is a failure?

How do you recover from the failure?

It's not difficult, you just have to make sure that each level of user can get their task done efficiently.

Most FOSS documentation is abysmal

[hduff]

That's how I got my entree into writing about Linux. Programmers are very smart, but not very eloquent and they are also very poor teachers.

There are any number of rules and guidelines for writing documentation, most of which are ignored since documentation is often the red-headed stepchild of the project.

Documentation should tell a story clearly and help the reader understand the 'why' and 'how' as well as the 'what'.

Re:Um, yes

[real-modo]

Yeah, this is one of the big annoyances with *nix man(1) pages.

Between "Name" and "Synopsis", they're all missing the "Typical usage examples" section. I shudder to think how much time has been wasted through this poor design choice.

An excellent post, with one omission: pictures.

[QilessQi]

I produce a lot of documentation along with my coding, and the one thing that makes it palatable (even to me, re-reading it) are illustrations.

I'm not talking about UML class or activity diagrams, although those things are great where appropriate. It could be anything relevant to getting your point across, like a fragment of a database table showing sample data so people can visualize how a group of tables will work together. Screen grabs with arrows and circles.

My rule of thumb: if I ever find myself drawing a picture on a whiteboard as I'm explaining my module to someone, I immediately stop and take a picture of the diagram I just drew, and ASAP afterwards I turn that picture into an illustration in the user docs. Then next time I can just whip out the docs and point to the illustration.

Re:Source code

[LinuxIsGarbage]

And for no arguments. Or at least print what is required to get help

C:\>app
Crappy app 0.0.0.1a
GPL 2 (If you don't like it fix it yourself

For help type -?

C:\>app /?
Crappy app 0.0.0.1a
GPL 2 (If you don't like it fix it yourself

I said enter -?, not /? This program was barely ported using cygwin, so you have to use *NIX arguments
Don't like it, fix it yourself
C:\>_

Not documenting is a conscious technique

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Not documenting is a more or less conscious technique developers and projects use to increase their market value. In those projects where the business model is consulting , you better believe that unless it's a public API , it's got zero documentation.

I know this is true. If software developers wanted to , they could write a nice book about how their source code works (as opposed to how their program works or how to write a plugin for their program).

They don't. This is not merely a case of being rushed for time or whatever. They don't want anyone else to understand it really. You control what only you understand- every developer knows this intuitively. Going to great pains to write a book-style learning aid to your actual code so that *just anyone* could take your place.. well... do I really need to finish that sentence?

Devs (don't) do it to so they can get some job security. Companies (don't ) do it to get consulting gigs. No one will admit that this is what's going on, but it is. I can hear the rebuttals already.. I can see the down-modding about to happen... go ahead.. flamebait me down. .. knock yourself out.

The closet analogy I can think of is magicians guarding their secrets. That worked very well for a long long time. The incentive was the same. If you give this away, if you make it understandable, you're going to be out of work. Slightly different dynamic, but you get the idea.

This is one of the product spaces we want to move into, but as you might imagine we have come to the conclusion that we have to move carefully, and even obliquely.

This is not exclusive to software engineering either. I know for a fact - which means i have multiple, full confessions, that mathematics teachers are far less clear than they could be wit their students. Some have said they do it to winnow out the weak. Others have admitted they do it to classes to students they don't like. They know it makes a huge difference, how you explain something- and that no one can accuse them of anything. That's basically a kind of power or force you can wield against and for people who please you or displease you.

Just sharing what I know.

Re:Documentation vs Tutorial

[__aaltlg1547]

You don't write the ping documentation yourself. You refer to it in the system reference manual. Somebody already wrote acceptable documentation for ping. You should study the ping man entry in, for example, the BSD user manual to see one way to write intelligble, useful documentation.

If you're advising the user to "try ping host xyz" you need to explain why and what to do if it returns the expected or unexpected results and what conclusions he can draw from them.

Re:Source code

[youngatheart]

Oh cool! I known that shutdown -r -t 600 works on Windows when I expect it to finish installing an update and I'm ready to go for a coffee, but I never remember what it is in Linux. Thanks to your tip, I now know I can use shutdown -h but I know the Linux guy had to put a number, so let me try shutdown -h 0 and see what it tells me about how

Re:Source code

[VortexCortex]

-h? Next time, use all three of these: -?, -help, --help. I'm probably not going to try throwing -h at a program without having a clue what it might do.

Then use the damn manual. That's why we write them. If you want to know how to use the manual, use the manual:
$ man man

... hmm, That gives me an idea.
$ man woman
No manual entry for woman

Yep. It knows everything!

Not just computer science

[recrudescence]

It is not the responsibility of the student to fix a broken lesson plan. For fuck’s sake, the entire point of having a teacher is that they know what the students need to learn and the students don’t!

This. I've lost count of the number of times as a medical student when I showed up in a pompous consultant's teaching session, (arranged with great difficulty, no less), and the first sentence was "So, what would you like me to teach you today?".
If I knew I'd have gone and read about it myself rather than waste time here with you, thank you very much you arrogant prick!

Re:Source code

[Aaron B Lingwood]

-h? Next time, use all three of these: -?, -help, --help. I'm probably not going to try throwing -h at a program without having a clue what it might do.

For non-Windows systems:
-h is Valid
-? is Invalid as '?' is a special parameter that may be expanded by the shell
-help is Invalid on GNU/Linux (though used often by ported applications)
--help is Invalid on older Unix systems.

For newer Windows systems:
-? is Valid (and mandatory)
-Help is Valid (and mandatory)
--help is Invalid
-help is Valid
-h is Valid

-h is the safest option

I tried the teach don't tell method at my current

[pecosdave]

job.

I was told how much my documentation sucks because the information they needed to operate the device wasn't in the manual. I challenged the person complaining to tell me something that was left out. I turned to the page in the manual and pointed to every answer that was left out.

Eventually the person complaining finally said "It's a bad manual because you have to read it to use it."

That's exactly the answer I was looking for.

My current place of employment does not want educational manuals. They want step by step instructions. I haven't written another manual for these people since. At my previous places of employment they raved about how good my educational documentation was. As a matter of fact the support manuals I wrote of an ISP in early 2000 that included modem and email troubleshooting leaked to other ISP's and outsourced call centers who began to implement the pirated copies into their own resources. I finally put a documentation GPL on it and released it all to the public (I've had people criticize me for not using Creative Commons, but this was a couple of years before that hit).

The lesson I learned - technicians want to learn. Monkeys only want "monkey push button".

Re:Source code

[noh8rz10]

reminds me, I hate man pages. there, I said it. they are the devil. i have never learned anything important from a man. rftm, you say? well stfu!

Re:Wikis are not magical, but they are not bad

[Zontar The Mindless]

With regard to technical documentation, wikis are where knowledge goes to die a horrible and lingering death.

Re:Documentation vs Tutorial

[kermidge]

"If you're advising the user to "try ping host xyz" you need to explain why and what to do if it returns the expected or unexpected results and what conclusions he can draw from them."

This.

You can show and tell what and even how all day long to little avail; telling why educates both writer and user and lets one get on with solving problems.

Re:Source code

[smash]

Given the number of bugs in most code, I'd suggest that it is pretty poor documentation for what the code is SUPPOSED to do.

Re:Source code

[Qzukk]

"Every utility I write has an -h switch, which describes the switches option-by-option, followed by short description of the function of the utility, plus gives links to additional documentation."

That's nice. If I ever get attacked by a switch in the wild i'll know I can use -h to tell me what that switch is.

Now that I know what every switch is, tell me how to use them to achieve my goals.

That's what really makes the difference between being a reference and being instructions.

Re:Source code

[Entropius]

Grep is a special case because regexes are complicated. But a tool like ls? Read the manpage.

Re:Source code

[Aaron B Lingwood]

Why do you claim --help is invalid on Windows?

It will work (at the moment) but goes against the conventions set by Microsoft.

Microsoft could, at any time, change the way it interprets a double hyphen, breaking your program.

It is safe at the moment because Windows passes the entire parameter string via ARGV