When explaining your favorite tool, ya wanna say “just install this!” “Simply change the configuration.” “Customizing it is easy.”
Don’t!
Steps that feel easy, simple, trivial to you are that way because of the experience you have in the tool. You understand how it works, you know what it’s like to install it, you understand those configuration options because you grasp the concepts inside.
None of these are easy for someone without your experience.
“Easy” is not a property of the tool. It’s a property of the tool-with-you.
If you tell someone to “just” do this “straightforward” thing that “obviously” works, then when they don’t know where to go or what the property keys mean, they feel stupid. They’re not stupid.
Learning the tool will be smoother for them if you don’t pretend it’s easy. Just scratch these words from every tutorial and all documentation:
- Obvious
- Straightforward
- Just
- Easy
- Simple
Let it be as difficult as it is. It’ll get easy for them later.