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Comment by lukan | Hacker News Reader

"Most tutorials are not for non-developers"

That has been repeated in the comments many times now, but the very headline says that this tutorial was indeed also intended for non developers.

Like some open source Github project that the author merely wanted to install, not starting to mess with the code. Basically, it is complaining in a satirical way about installation readmes, that maybe they could be made easier, that also non developers can follow some simple steps. A complaint that I can very much agree with, even though I am a developer. But so often little steps are left out and when that happens in a area you are not familiar with, then this can mean lots of wasted hours.

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> "That has been repeated in the comments many times now, but the very headline says that this tutorial was indeed also intended for non developers"

tbf, that's not how I read the headline. The headline is: "How I, a non-developer, read the tutorial you, a developer, wrote for me, a beginner"

The author is a beginner, which puts them in the field - so the parent comment is valid no?

The headline has been edited, in its current shape I tend to agree to you.

> it is complaining in a satirical way about installation readmes, that maybe they could be made easier, that also non developers can follow some simple steps

See I missed that context :D

Installation readmes are an interesting example – they shouldn’t exist. Put that effort in an install script instead.

If you want me to mechanically follow some steps, perhaps with a decision tree attached … computers are really good at that!

The install script may not have all the context it needs to be installed. In the long run it is better to teach the user how your software works in plain english.

Even in projects with an install script, for example pmbootstrap, the install script also needs a tutorial.

In my experience, projects with minimal documentation and an install script will have the the install script fail halfway through because it assumed something about my system that isn't true, or it will do something incredibly insecure like requesting su and then curl | bash

The installation readme generally tells you how to invoke the install script that does all the really complicated stuff.

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