Practice & Assessment
Test your understanding of Writing Tutorials and How-To Guides
Multiple Choice Questions
6A developer with six months of React experience wants to add React Query to their existing app. Should you point them to a React Query tutorial or a how-to guide?
A tutorial has 15 sequential steps with no intermediate checkpoints. What is the risk?
Which step is written correctly?
What is the primary purpose of the fresh environment test for documentation?
A how-to guide ends with the last working step. What should be added and why?
What tool can you add to a CI pipeline to prevent publishing documentation with broken external links?
Coding Challenges
1Rewrite a Broken Tutorial Step Sequence
You are given a 10-step tutorial for setting up a PostgreSQL database with Node.js. The tutorial has 4 documented problems: two steps bundle multiple actions, one step has no verification output, and one step is missing a prerequisite check. Input: the original step list. Task: rewrite all 10 steps with: one action per step, imperative verbs, expected output for every code-execution step, one checkpoint after step 5 with a verification command, and a troubleshooting note for the most common failure in the sequence. Output: Markdown file. Estimated time: 20–25 minutes.
Mini Project
Tutorial and How-To Pair for a Developer Tool
Pick a developer tool you know well (a framework, CLI tool, or library). Write two documents: (1) a complete beginner tutorial that builds one working thing end to end — introduction with expected outcome, explicit prerequisites with versions, minimum 8 sequential steps each with one action and expected output, at least two checkpoints, and a working final state; (2) a how-to guide for one advanced task with the same tool — problem statement, prerequisites assuming tutorial completion, steps with one action each, a troubleshooting section covering 3 failure modes, and 2 related guide links. Both documents must pass the fresh environment test — follow them yourself from scratch before submitting.