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Ask HN: Which are the best written tutorials you have seen till now?
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'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.
- 2to15characters 8y agoAny of the Explorable Explanations that Bret Victor creates. Later followed up by more from Nicky Case, and more
- msaharia 8y agoAll the links I clicked led to other websites. Is it an aggregator?
- trendoid 8y agoWhat 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)
- canalli 8y agoI 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.
- msaharia 8y agoThank you. Could you link to some of his online pieces you like?
- wglb 8y agoThis was probably the most effective tutorial I have ever used: https://www.amazon.com/RPG-III-400-Shelly-Cashman/dp/0878352465 https://www.amazon.com/RPG-III-400-Shelly-Cashman/dp/0878352... 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.
- msaharia 8y agoI'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 8y agoIt 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.
- copperx 8y agoI'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.
- msaharia 8y agoThanks!
- vram22 8y ago>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."
- tsycho 8y agoAlmost anything on NSHipster
- lake99 8y agoLearn 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.
- tuangeek 8y agovimtutor
- Jedi72 8y agoDigital Ocean docs
- msaharia 8y agoActually a good idea. I have always found them to be precise.
- alexeldeib 8y agoKubernetes 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 8y agoThese are nice. Thanks!
- yesenadam 8y agoI 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
- martinni 8y agohttps://www.raywenderlich.com/ https://www.raywenderlich.com/ Funny, insightful, plenty of screenshots and very detailed explanations.
- utam0k 8y agoGo lang turorial. It is very good to learn while running source codes.
- pandeya 8y agohttps://internetingishard.com https://internetingishard.com - one of the best ever tutorials on HTML and CSS.