“A Rust Documentation Ecosystem Review” categorize software documentation into 4 categories:

  • tutorial - guide for beginners
    • solves the problem of “you don’t know what you don’t know”
  • how-to guides - recipes to address real-world goal or problem
  • explanation - describes the philosophy and provides context on why something is so-and-so
  • reference - language or API reference 1

It propose that each category serves distinct purpose, and are all important.

Footnotes

  1. A Rust Documentation Ecosystem Review | ramblings of @harudagondi