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The article gives some useful tips. But (if I may) I'll disagree with a couple of small parts: > Write for beginners I prefer "write for your audience". For e
by rikroots 2y ago
The article gives some useful tips. But (if I may) I'll disagree with a couple of small parts:
> Write for beginners
I prefer "write for your audience". For example, in the first lesson for my canvas library[1], I'm aiming at an audience of front-end developers - they should know how to code a very basic HTML page and start a local server to view it.
Of course, my lesson fails here. I'll add a line near the top of the copy to say who the intended audience is, and a link to the MDN frontend developer course[2] for any complete beginners who (somehow) found the lesson.
> Make code snippets copy/pasteable
Maybe I'm an outlier but, when I blindly copy-paste code, I rarely learn about that code: it's just some magic that I feed into the computer to get results. I learn better when the tutorial forces me to type out the code (and I do nasty things in my tutorial to persuade learners to type rather than copy-paste).
[1] - https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/learn/first-lesson https://scrawl-v8.rikweb.org.uk/learn/first-lesson
[2] - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn_web_development https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn_web_developme...
- pwillia7 2y agoI am with you on #1 -- I write a lot of tutorials but I'm not trying to help you learn how to open a terminal. I'd prefer to lose those readers up front rather than frustrate them for 30 minutes. #2 is too far. If people want to misuse your stuff, shame on them, but don't boobie trap it!
- mtlynch 2y agoYeah, I think I need a different wording for "write for beginners." It's not "write for beginners to programming" but "write for beginners to your particular subject." Like in your case, you're writing for frontend developers who are not new to making webpages, but they're beginners at using the canvas element.
- jlizen 2y agoMaybe, don't assume familiarity?