Corvid Crone3d ago

*gently grabs the cheeks of all programmers to stare deeply into their eyes*

All I want is a dry tech manual. A boring, well indexed manual that defines every function. Not a chatbot. Not a training. Not a million "articles" that I have to search through. Not a "community forum".

My rice cooker came with one. I want one for every piece of software I have to interact with.

Go get yourself a technical writer if necessary.

I. Want. An. Instructional. Manual.

Show threadnadja
@CorvidCrone I miss the time when software came with manuals fit for knocking out your manager in case he gave you shit for still reading through the War-and-Peace-sized manual
May 27 at 9:04pmWeb
Show threadCorvid Crone3d ago

@dequbed

The good old days 🥲

Show threadThe Doctor3d ago
@dequbed @CorvidCrone Hard same!
Show threadnadja3d ago
@drwho @CorvidCrone honestly, the software was also pretty damn shite. I'm certainly not missing the quality of the software itself, but I am missing the quality of documentation that was generally expected.
Show threadThe Doctor3d ago
@dequbed @CorvidCrone WordPerfect, Word, Turbo IDE, and, hell, EDIT.COM had their flaws, but they also were miles more usable and less troublesome than most user software these days.
Show threadnadja3d ago
@drwho @CorvidCrone maybe, I never used most of those too much. But old CAD and CAM software was *bad*. Simulation / scientific software even more so. Sure if your previous standard was batch processed hand punched FORTRAN they were all usable but a lot of companies really showed that they were trying out these newfangled GUIs for the first time and spend all their money on the shiny interface and none on fixing bugs.
Show threadDanCast2d ago
@dequbed @CorvidCrone I remember when all tech manuals, and really, it was all of them, had an ASCII chart in the appendices
Show threadferricoxide2d ago
@dequbed @CorvidCrone

I remember the first time I went to my university's Sun lab and, just inside the door, was a set of abutting desks holding a long row of binders containing all of the Sun documentation. Ran into similar, after college, at a few customer-sites (the one I remember most was a large bank that was running lots of IBM Power 4 AIX systems). Yeah, there were the only man pages, but some people still preferred paper at the time. This was also well before Google existed and the only resources you had outside of the man-pages was the comp.* Usenet groups and maybe a lucky WAIS or Gopher hit.

Given my temperment, it's surprising it never occurred to me that those binders might be useful as bludgeons to be used on PHBs.
Show threadJustin Derrick2d ago

@dequbed @CorvidCrone Story time!

When I started a new job in the IT department of my company, I got sent for a week of training in the US. I got back with a brain full of new information and skills.

A few weeks later, I arrive at my desk, and someone is apparently using it for storage -- there are a dozen extremely heavy boxes, on my desk, on my filing cabinet, on the floor...

My mentor stops by, says "Oh, good. You got the manuals I ordered."

AIX, DB2, ADSM, CMOD, and others...

When I asked where I was supposed to put them, and how I was supposed to organize them, he said "Oh, I think they're already indexed by weight."

I actually read them. All of them.

Show threadTim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE2d ago
@dequbed @CorvidCrone Microsoft C 7 (IIRC) came in a box a couple of feet long filled with books (a complete set of documentation for Windows development). And a few floppy disks tacked on at the end.