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I have to agree here. There's nobody better to explain how something really works than the person who wrote it. The rest of us are just fumbling around guessing
by bphogan 10y ago
I have to agree here. There's nobody better to explain how something really works than the person who wrote it. The rest of us are just fumbling around guessing.
As a dev and a creative person, I understand the desire to get something out there. But documentation and tutorials aren't just something that's nice to have. They are your marketing tool, your adoption driver, and the way to create educated advocates for your project. They are as valuable to your project's success as a splashy "getting started" web site is.
- AShedOfTools 10y agoThat process of you fumbling around and guessing is actually really extraordinarily helpful. The things a contributor might think to do or to try, and the things that a newcomer might think to do or to try, are completely different. No documentation survives its first encounter with a real newcomer. We can, and will, continue working on the onboarding experience, but we'll need real users to roll up their sleeves and wade into it, and the first few of them will have questions we didn't anticipate, and make assumptions we've never considered, and try use cases we've never thought of. Creating good documentation is something that newcomers and contributors need to collaborate on.
- bphogan 10y agoThat process is the second part of the process, once clear, basic documentation exists.
- martco 10y agoTo me this product markets itself. This team has accomplished a lot with this tool, and i'm compelled to adopt and educate myself. The proof (and splash) is in the pudding here. Kudos to dev team that built this.