Should programming language docs come with exercises for the reader to test their understanding?
This feels like a great way to help people learn, and you could even measure docs by pass rate.
I've seen online books occasionally use this format, but never official resources.
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I've been writing docs for different programming language operators (+, *, == and so on). Each one gets a separate web page.
I've suddenly realised that / is much harder! docs/+ and docs/== is fine, but docs// just doesn't work as a URL in a static site.
Any ideas?
There are docs resources like https://diataxis.fr/ that categorise documents based on format and intended audience.
They don't say where you should start, or what order you should write docs.
I'm currently thinking README > reference > tutorial > how-tos. Agree/disagree?
Trying the nix CLI today, and I'm seriously impressed with the formatting of its --help output.
Indented warnings, italics, bullets, even adding a left border to code snippets! It's a nice reminder to take full advantage of terminal features to help the reader.