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As general commentary, I don't mind a bit of humor and personality in manuals, but I do mind when manuals become overly cute so as to start obfuscating or takin

by bmitc 4y ago

As general commentary, I don't mind a bit of humor and personality in manuals, but I do mind when manuals become overly cute so as to start obfuscating or taking away from the concepts. A manual is there for me to learn how to do something, and it shouldn't be an opportunity for the author to force their creative writing on users.

nigamanth 4y ago
They would've thought that the main customer was losing interest in the manual, but what they don't realize is that the people who are reading the manual require knowledge - not humor or useless information.
veltas 4y ago
There has always been a tendency of authors to inject a lot of themselves into technical content, which is charming to some and anathema to others. And I would guess in the 80's people felt subversive and "not square" writing like this, too. There's a lot of it. Starting FORTH is like this, and I love that book, but I can see how it would have irritated a lot of people from the era it was written in.
- bmitc 4y ago
  I like Starting Forth. I think it strikes a good balance, but it is more of a tutorial than a manual or reference. Although, a good manual should probably contain tutorials.
TeMPOraL 4y ago
That's you, today. What about back then? Those early ACEs and the Apple's lawsuit were before my time, but then I live in a former USSR satellite state, so we were 10-15 years behind, tech-wise. Growing up in the 90s, I've seen plenty of similar humor and illustrations in various computer books, and I believe the reason for them was the same as in the US in the 80s: personal computers were new. Computers were a completely new category of appliance, never seen before, alien. Most people in the market for them were first-time buyers, who didn't know anything about these machines, or what to do with them - at best, maybe they had a friend at local university or in some office that worked with them. Those people (or, perhaps in most cases, their kids) had to learn not just the operating basics (where the power button is, where you plug peripherals in), but completely new abstractions and conceptual frameworks - files and folders, data vs. code, CLI interfaces, later GUI interfaces. Clicking. Double clicking. It was overwhelming, and whether learning was worth it wasn't obvious. Thus, all these cutesy drawings, all that humor and personality and conversational tone, served a critical function: to defuse the apprehension people had. To make the reader feel safe. "Sure, the computer seems like a complicated beast, but it's more of a friendly, if a little silly, pet you'll want to befriend. Yes, it's often frustrating, we feel that too. But look, now you know how to use it, and nothing broke. Wasn't that hard, was it?". The generation of my parents needed that. My generation grew up exploring them on our own. The next generation was born to a world in which computers were ubiquitous, and learned from osmosis. So the manuals could go back to their usual, boring, utilitarian style we all love when we're not deadly afraid of the once-in-a-lifetime conceptual framework shift.
- bmitc 4y ago
  That’s a good perspective. I do like personality in a manual but some can take it too far.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  The US/UK angle was that home computing was subversive, playful, anti-corporate, and empowering. It was a very Boomer view, and this kind of tech writing epitomises it. Smalltalk, BBS culture, and super-affordable UK machines like the ZX Spectrum all come from a similar place. Of course it's not how things turned out.

by bmitc 4y ago

nigamanth 4y ago

They would've thought that the main customer was losing interest in the manual, but what they don't realize is that the people who are reading the manual require knowledge - not humor or useless information.

veltas 4y ago

There has always been a tendency of authors to inject a lot of themselves into technical content, which is charming to some and anathema to others. And I would guess in the 80's people felt subversive and "not square" writing like this, too. There's a lot of it. Starting FORTH is like this, and I love that book, but I can see how it would have irritated a lot of people from the era it was written in.

bmitc 4y ago
I like Starting Forth. I think it strikes a good balance, but it is more of a tutorial than a manual or reference. Although, a good manual should probably contain tutorials.

TeMPOraL 4y ago

That's you, today. What about back then? Those early ACEs and the Apple's lawsuit were before my time, but then I live in a former USSR satellite state, so we were 10-15 years behind, tech-wise. Growing up in the 90s, I've seen plenty of similar humor and illustrations in various computer books, and I believe the reason for them was the same as in the US in the 80s: personal computers were new. Computers were a completely new category of appliance, never seen before, alien. Most people in the market for them were first-time buyers, who didn't know anything about these machines, or what to do with them - at best, maybe they had a friend at local university or in some office that worked with them. Those people (or, perhaps in most cases, their kids) had to learn not just the operating basics (where the power button is, where you plug peripherals in), but completely new abstractions and conceptual frameworks - files and folders, data vs. code, CLI interfaces, later GUI interfaces. Clicking. Double clicking. It was overwhelming, and whether learning was worth it wasn't obvious. Thus, all these cutesy drawings, all that humor and personality and conversational tone, served a critical function: to defuse the apprehension people had. To make the reader feel safe. "Sure, the computer seems like a complicated beast, but it's more of a friendly, if a little silly, pet you'll want to befriend. Yes, it's often frustrating, we feel that too. But look, now you know how to use it, and nothing broke. Wasn't that hard, was it?". The generation of my parents needed that. My generation grew up exploring them on our own. The next generation was born to a world in which computers were ubiquitous, and learned from osmosis. So the manuals could go back to their usual, boring, utilitarian style we all love when we're not deadly afraid of the once-in-a-lifetime conceptual framework shift.

bmitc 4y ago
That’s a good perspective. I do like personality in a manual but some can take it too far.
TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
The US/UK angle was that home computing was subversive, playful, anti-corporate, and empowering. It was a very Boomer view, and this kind of tech writing epitomises it. Smalltalk, BBS culture, and super-affordable UK machines like the ZX Spectrum all come from a similar place. Of course it's not how things turned out.