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Pointers for writing software tutorials (refactoringenglish.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

I don't quite agree that for a beginer being presented with

sudo apt update && \
  sudo apt install --yes software-properties-common && \
  sudo add-apt-repository --yes ppa:deadsnakes/ppa && \
  sudo apt install --yes python3.9

is better than

sudo apt update
sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa
sudo apt install python3.9

All those symbols and "--yes" used to feel quite cryptic to me.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The argument is that a beginner might not notice a command falls. The && prevents further execution.

Personally I've seen that happen several times myself. Beginners are just not used to reading the cmd outputs and I can't blame them. There are many CLI tools with awful error reporting out there.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago

That's why showing the expected outcome is also very important. It can feel very verbose, but the number of times I've been unclear as to if something worked because the documentation goes on immediately to the next step without demonstrating the success/failure states is extremely frustrating.

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