*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.
Testify!
The two best tech manuals I can think of were the service docs for the BBC micro and the Philips KT3 television chassis.
Modulo the early O'Reilly books, Droms & Lemon, and perhaps the Continuous Delivery book, everything else has been a bit awful.
@JuliaRez @CorvidCrone
BBC Micro docs in general were superb. Partly what inspired me to become a Tech Author.
Right? It's been a bit of a while, but you could read the (quite thin) service book, and feel like you could design a reasonable 6502 system on the back of an envelope _and_ be confident that you could fix all the common faults you'd come across.
Books like that should be inspiring rather than distressing. 'I've suffered, and I'm writing this so you don't have to' over 'I've suffered, and now you must, too'.
Corvid Crone
Julia Rez
Jeff Bronks