Yo, fellow coders and tech enthusiasts! Adron here, and today we’re diving into a topic that’s been grinding my gears for ages – the stuff that’s always missing from online tutorials and docs. Buckle up, ’cause we’re about to get grumpy!

0. The Invisible Prerequisites

Before we even get to the main course, let’s talk about the appetizer that so many tutorials forget to serve – the damn prerequisites! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started a tutorial only to find out halfway through that I needed some obscure tool or specific version of something that wasn’t mentioned upfront.

Here’s the deal, tutorial writers: lay out ALL the prerequisites clearly at the beginning. And I mean ALL of them. Don’t assume I have jq installed for your GraphQL tutorial. Don’t assume I’m running the latest version of Python (and for the love of code, specify WHICH Python – 2.x or 3.x?).

And here’s a novel idea: how about actually telling me where to find and install these prerequisites? Give me links, give me version numbers, give me command line instructions. Assume I’m starting from scratch on a fresh machine. Because guess what? Sometimes I am!

Even though this isn’t a tutorial, but just because I mentioned them here, check out jq here and Python here.

Continue reading “The Missing Pieces: What Online Tutorials and Docs Always Seem to Forget” →