Thanks for some of the early feedback. I did a few tweaks: separated the quick start into two (one for students, one for experienced devs), moved up the examples, and duplicated some of HN summary text on the linked page. The latter because I, as an infrequent HN submitter, hadn't realized that some (maybe most?) people don't read the HN summary.
rfl890 12 hours ago [-]
I'm very confused at first glance. What are "coder scripts"? Why is "std" repeated 3 times in "dk StdStd_Std.Run"? What on earth is "Tr1Stdlib_V414Io"? The entire tool comes off as arbitrary and confusing, at least to me. I would really quite appreciate a brief primer on the language and its design decisions, architecture and syntax. So far, I'm just having assorted bits of information thrown at me with no real structure.
(Note: I have never touched OCaml. Is this some weird OCaml thing?)
beckford 9 hours ago [-]
It is the OCaml language but it also isn't packaged like conventional OCaml. Please don't blame OCaml for that.
It _does_ need a primer for those unfamiliar with OCaml. I was thinking ... since this is scripting ... part of it will probably take the form of a cheat sheet for people coming from Java/C#, JavaScript and Python backgrounds. And another part of it would be how to read an OCaml expression from left to right. Other suggestions welcome.
Direct answers:
- the full explanation of why Std is repeated three times is covered over the first four sections of the first manpage "dk(1)": <https://diskuv.com/dk/help/latest/manual/dk-1/>. It will go over some of the design behind that and also introduce aliases so that "the tool `StdStd_Std.Run` can be typed as `Run`". Did I unnecessarily expose "StdStd_Std" in the introduction?
Thank you for your response. I don't feel that you unnecessarily exposed anything, just that not much explanation was given. Take a look at The Rust Programming Language's "getting started" section[1]. The installation steps are clear, the code is deconstructed and explained, and you are made familiar with the basic CLI tooling. Looking at yours, installation steps are clear, but I'm just given commands and code to paste with no explanation as to what it all does. Sure, I could go browse the man pages, but it's easier to ease into reading manual pages after a gentle beginner's explanation.
Although, given that you mentioned teaching, maybe the page is intended to be presentation-style (less information on the page, more to be explained vocally)? But you can correct me if I'm wrong.
Yes, there is always verbal instruction (not really explanation) to start with the students. For example, most students I work with don't know how to open a terminal ... they need top-down guidance with copy and paste. The most explanation they would get at the start is that a terminal is where you can copy text and see a response. Pointing them at a web page with directions (mine or others) has never worked for the vast majority of them. The Rust pages in particular... some of them would not understand that they have to press the greater than symbol (>) to go to the next page, and almost all of them would not know they had to strip $ from the commands (or have a clue what Linux is). I think the success rate would be near zero (0%) for that Rust guide without hand-holding. Of course, once they've seen how to do something, they should not need as much handholding.
So eventually we come back and redo the content ... and that becomes the time that explanations are added.
I do like the Rust doc for experienced devs though, although I'll quibble that the doc is not good for Windows users. I'm add a separate explanatory quick start for experienced devs.
tempodox 16 hours ago [-]
I wouldn't associate having to use `Lwt_main.run` with “a limited background in programming”, but maybe that's just me.
beckford 16 hours ago [-]
I usually structure teaching the same way done in https://www.writethedocs.org/videos/eu/2017/the-four-kinds-o.... So "the Quick Walkthrough Guide will explain what dk scripts are and give you small examples to run" is simply a learning-oriented tutorial which is mostly about giving students confidence and visual feedback. And simultaneously it an explanation of nothing (the video has a great explanation for why to do that). So, I agree that an explanation of threads + Internet + cross-compilation would quite nuts, but for an experienced developer I'd expect to see a meaty example (take a look at https://ziglang.org/ for comparison).
One concrete action may be to make two distinct Quick Start guides ... one for the experienced and one for the inexperienced students though. Is that your thinking?
filoleg 12 hours ago [-]
You are totally fine, the grandparent comment is just either needlessly nitpicking (“great is the enemy of the perfect”) or misunderstanding what the tool is supposed to be used for.
P.S. Your idea of having two distinct quick start guides (one that goes into the meaty details and another one that is just “run this command and you are good to go”) is great. But imo it is not necessary/crucial, and not having it doesn’t detract from the value proposition of your tool at all either.
d357r0y3r 7 hours ago [-]
I just couldn't figure out what this was in <60 seconds. Examples and use cases need to be a little more prominent in the docs.
(Note: I have never touched OCaml. Is this some weird OCaml thing?)
It _does_ need a primer for those unfamiliar with OCaml. I was thinking ... since this is scripting ... part of it will probably take the form of a cheat sheet for people coming from Java/C#, JavaScript and Python backgrounds. And another part of it would be how to read an OCaml expression from left to right. Other suggestions welcome.
Direct answers:
- the full explanation of why Std is repeated three times is covered over the first four sections of the first manpage "dk(1)": <https://diskuv.com/dk/help/latest/manual/dk-1/>. It will go over some of the design behind that and also introduce aliases so that "the tool `StdStd_Std.Run` can be typed as `Run`". Did I unnecessarily expose "StdStd_Std" in the introduction?
- the `Tr1Stdlib_V414Io` is a library described in the first reference manual "dkcoder-libraries(7)": <https://diskuv.com/dk/help/latest/manual/dkcoder-libraries-7...>
Although, given that you mentioned teaching, maybe the page is intended to be presentation-style (less information on the page, more to be explained vocally)? But you can correct me if I'm wrong.
[1] https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ch01-00-getting-started.html
So eventually we come back and redo the content ... and that becomes the time that explanations are added.
I do like the Rust doc for experienced devs though, although I'll quibble that the doc is not good for Windows users. I'm add a separate explanatory quick start for experienced devs.
One concrete action may be to make two distinct Quick Start guides ... one for the experienced and one for the inexperienced students though. Is that your thinking?
P.S. Your idea of having two distinct quick start guides (one that goes into the meaty details and another one that is just “run this command and you are good to go”) is great. But imo it is not necessary/crucial, and not having it doesn’t detract from the value proposition of your tool at all either.