Starting next year, I am planning to write more well-organized tutorials as a way to increase my rate of learning and understanding (The topics won't be of interest to general HN community). But I wanted the see what kind of best practices are appreciated in the community. I am not referring to documentation per se, of which I do plenty for myself during work. But on improving myself as a communicator in the written medium when explaining things through code+simpler language.
I'm sure it's a cliche at this point, but I don't think enough writers emulate K&R's style on The C Programming Language. The prose is short, dense, and yet not tedious.<p>Another great "tutorial" to emulate is the TeXbook by Knuth. This one is verbose, but it shows the reader all the little details and pitfalls about the software without becoming boring.
Kubernetes the hard way: <a href="https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kubernetes-the-hard-way" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kubernetes-the-hard-way</a><p>Gave me the necessary understanding of the core layers of a cluster.<p>The Digital Ocean docs were already mentioned but they're also an exellent reference source.
I thought <i>Eloquent Javascript</i> was wonderfully done. Read online here: <a href="http://eloquentjavascript.net/" rel="nofollow">http://eloquentjavascript.net/</a><p>Everything by Julia Evans <a href="https://jvns.ca/" rel="nofollow">https://jvns.ca/</a> , Arnold Robbins, Brian Kernighan (e.g. <i>The AWK Programming Language</i>)<p>More mathematical: Knuth et al, <i>Concrete Mathematics</i>; John Stillwell, <i>Mathematics and its History</i>; Tristan Needham, <i>Visual Complex Mathematics</i>
This was probably the most effective tutorial I have ever used: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/RPG-III-400-Shelly-Cashman/dp/0878352465" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/RPG-III-400-Shelly-Cashman/dp/0878352...</a><p>Early in my consulting career, I got a gig doing RPG III and in three days got up to speed.<p>Not relevant to many folks these days.
<a href="https://internetingishard.com" rel="nofollow">https://internetingishard.com</a> - one of the best ever tutorials on HTML and CSS.
Learn from Kernighan. Most tutorials are dry and teach "follow these steps". The better ones explain the "why" of the feature. Kernighan comes up with fun examples to keep the reader engaged.
<a href="https://www.raywenderlich.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.raywenderlich.com/</a><p>Funny, insightful, plenty of screenshots and very detailed explanations.
I really like Mark Myers' style. He writes "A Smarter Way to Learn Bla" books. His books allow you to turn off your brain and simply sail through.