this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2025
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Pointers for writing software tutorials (refactoringenglish.com)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Think about the wording of the headings so that they communicate as much as possible without sacrificing brevity.

Which of these tutorials would you rather read?

  1. Go
  2. Installation
  3. Hello, world!
  4. Deployment

Or this?

  1. Why Choose Go?
  2. Install Go 1.23
  3. Create a Basic “Hello, World” Go App
  4. Deploy Your App to the Web

honestly, neither of those? I get the general point, the first one looks careless and vague, but the second one looks AI generated and needlessly long, hard to skim for what I'm looking for. Why do the headers say Go 3 times when I already know I am in a Go article? Why is the specific version in that one header (even if you will be pointing them to a specific one in the content)?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

I got the same sort of impression in the "Write for beginners" section. The "good" example is like 3x as long but contains less actual information. The reader is already looking up a tutorial, you don't need to sell them on what they're about to do with marketing speak. I've really come to value conciseness in recent years.