Oh wow, I literally have a blog post queued up about how different kinds of "documentation" can be split into similar categories. Great to see that someone else has had a similar insight!

My categories are Source (Reference), Procedures (~Tutorials), Examples (How-tos) and Meta (Tribal Knowledge, history, etc).

In the context of software teams (and others I'm sure) my anecdotal insight is that without a balance of these kinds of information, certain team functions break down:

- No Source/Reference, no shared deep understanding

- No Procedures, difficulty scaling processes (and difficulty onboarding new team members)

- No examples, harder to develop new skills / level up existing skills

- No meta, no context or "why", leading to less motivation

Indeed, that was the first time I've seen someone clearly voice more-or-less the same view, when the link previously appeared here on HN.

Yup! This helped me immensely when I started writing documentation more regularly. In the past I used to mix all 4 and ended up confusing everyone.