Skip to main content

We used to write good documentation... (w/The Taylor and Amy Show)

In this unscripted episode of Veronica Explains, I hang out with my good friends Taylor and Amy from @TaylorAmyShow and we rant/rave about documentation, and compare the (often sorry) state of today's Linux/FOSS docs against the (often fantastic) documentation we had when vintage computers were just called computers.

Videos and channels mentioned in the episode:
🖥️ The Computer Chronicles "Computers in Education" from 1983: https://archive.org/details/Computer_Chronicles/Season+01/Computer+Chronicles+-+01x26+-+Computers+in+Education.mpeg
🫡 The late, great Jim Butterfield's classic C64 training tape: https://archive.org/details/commodore-64-training-tape-with-jim-butterfield
🤩 The sequel to this episode, over on Taylor and Amy's channel:
👈 Robin from @8_Bit , a favorite YouTube channel of mine
🗃️ Eric from @EricsEdgeVideos who provided Taylor and Amy with Multiplan!

Lastly, if you want to help me make more videos, please consider joining my Ko-Fi or Patreon. Members over there get weekly update posts from me and help me decide what topics to cover. This channel's not sponsored by anyone but you, so thank you for your consideration!
- https://ko-fi.com/VeronicaExplains
- https://patreon.com/VeronicaExplains

Chapters
0:00 Reading manuals with Taylor and Amy
2:13 The Commodore 64 User's Guide
8:00 By The Editors of Consumer Guide, The User's Guide to Texas Instruments TI-994A Computer, Software, & Peripherals
12:37 About my good friends Taylor and Amy!
13:05 Odyssey2 Computer Intro
16:52 Waxing poetic about generations and their needs
19:03 Look at this Multiplan manual!

Computer Chronicles : Stewart Cheifet : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Computer Chronicles is an American half-hour television series, broadcast from 1983 to 2002 on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) public television, which...
Internet Archive
#opensource #foss #documentation #retro #vintagecomputing
This entry was edited (4 hours ago)

reshared this

in reply to vkc via PeerTube

hamishtpb
hamishtpb
• •
Super jealous of the collection in the background. Thumbs up to the Arch wiki people. Have you ever seen the ZX Spectrum manual and the "Horizons" intro cassette that comes with it, absolutely amazing and interactive learning.
in reply to vkc via PeerTube

48kRAM
48kRAM
• •
I can't figure out how to log in and comment on the video (does peertube have a .... manual? 😉 ) but this is a great video and I'm so pleased that more people think modern computer docs are terrible.
in reply to 48kRAM

mmu_ma[N]
mmu_ma[N]
• •
you actually just commented on the video, that's one of the great things of ActivityPub, notwithstanding the rest. 🙂
in reply to vkc via PeerTube

Jim Rogantini
Jim Rogantini
• •
Thank you for yet another great video, making yet another excellent point! I totally agree. I feel manuals (or knowledge found online) nowadays basically come down to this:
Either they‘re too basic or require you to already know everything…
in reply to vkc via PeerTube

Judeau
Judeau
• •

That was an absolute riot. Hands down one of the most fun videos I have watched by anyone. I was laughing so hard at times.

You all have such great charisma and really work well together. I felt like I was just hanging out with some of my goofy friends.

It was great to see the different approaches taken to writing manuals back in the day. It really does seem to be a lost art. I was always fond of the C64 one myself.

Keep up the excellent videos and interesting topics! 👍

in reply to vkc via PeerTube

Devon Day
Devon Day
• •
Next time my family and I are at a thrift store, I'll have to check and see if they have any old computer manuals. These would be interesting to read just for the historical aspect of them, as I'm a little too young to have experienced much before Windows 98.
in reply to vkc via PeerTube

d3routr
d3routr
• •
Excellent video! By coincidence my mnt pocket reform open hardware mini laptop arrived yesterday and I was going through its awesome accompanying manual when I got notified about your video. Great manuals (in my opinion) exist today! https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-pocket-reform-operator-handbook (there's also the free PDF version for download)

MNT Pocket Reform Operator Handbook - MNT Research Shop

The official hardcopy manual accompanying the MNT Pocket Reform open hardware laptop.
shop.mntre.com
in reply to vkc via PeerTube

Chris Sears
Chris Sears
• •
One of my prize possessions is my TRS Color BASIC book. Dan Shiffman's class on Nebula inspired me to want to replicate the programs in a modern language like p5.js.
in reply to vkc via PeerTube

Christof Donat
Christof Donat
• •
The C=64 manual was my first computer book. It taught me programming, and therefore laid the foundation for my career. It was great.
in reply to vkc via PeerTube

maryjane :fediverso:
maryjane :fediverso:
• •

One of the coolest videos I have seen in a couple of years about documentation.

"The manual is angry at you for needing it!"

This one cuts deep.

in reply to vkc via PeerTube

LWFlouisa
LWFlouisa
• •
I was running into a similar thing with Olive Video Editor specifically, where apparently their idea of a help guide was a discord server, and I was trying to find out why they took down version 1. Baring in mind I had just finished clearing out disk space, and needing to reinstall Libretranslate. If programming were any other line of work, it seems like the supplier of yarn to crochet a blanket or sweater for blame you for needing a new color of yarn. I mean that's how dysfunctional that is.
in reply to vkc via PeerTube

jfml
jfml
• •

As always archive.org does not dissappoint and someone has indeed done the good work of digitizing (an apparently similarly well-loved) edition of Odyssey2 – Computer Intro:

https://archive.org/details/computer-intro-us-odyssey-2-1979

in reply to vkc via PeerTube

Antoine D. :facil:
Antoine D. :facil:
• •
There's a French Debian users association called Debian-Facile (easy Debian) that has produced a very good manual for beginners in Debian and even in computing. You can have a look at the English translation here:
https://debian-beginners-handbook.tuxfamily.org/bookworm-en/the_beginners_handbook.html

The beginner’s handbook

debian-beginners-handbook.tuxfamily.org
in reply to Antoine D. :facil:

Antoine D. :facil:
Antoine D. :facil:
• •
Note that I'm not a member of this association. The facil in my username refer to another association, a French Canadian one dedicated to the promotion of FOSS.
⇧