Recently, me and a friend from University were invited to make a little course about Golang — Google’s language that’s skyrocketing to be a trend everywhere.

So, I remembered that a few months ago, I bought a course about it, but never touched it. That’s the right time, isn’t it?

As I proceeded through the theory and deep talk about some topics around the language, I was writing code on a file to be able to run it later (my computer at the university couldn’t install Go because of admin rights). In this file, I wrote and commented almost everything on matters of syntax about Golang. Then, an interesting thought came into mind:

With a single file, good comments and a working code, I was able to document almost everything about the code writing itself.

It took me less than the full course I’ve bought to start programming Go just by looking at my anotations — considering I’m already used to software engineering.

Just one, good looking and well formatted file.

I realized that, to start coding in a new language (considering you are already acquainted to it’s paradigms, like OOP for OOP languages), you don’t need to watch hours of someone teaching the language from scratch. You just need the syntax to understand the new flavour. And this is where the Shortest Tutorial Ever came into my mind.

The Shortest Tutorial Ever is a project on GitHub of creating the leanest and most direct tutorials for any technology — like I did with Go. Of course you will not be an expert just by seeing the syntax, but obviously that’s not the goal: the objective is to help anyone to be able to write code from the beginning of their learning curve.

The project is open on GitHub for everyone to contribute with their own shortest tutorials, so I invite everyone to do it. If the tech you want to write about is not on our (wish)list, please, fell free to add it.

My Golang file that made this come to my mind is currently under review by one of my colleagues — a huge fan of Go. As soon as we have it very refined, we will be able to link it into the list.

It’s your time now, developer. Let’s help our comrades to understand the pillars of any technology by doing it, by running code and seeing the results as soon as possible; by applying what they already know.

Help us in the Shortest Tutorial Ever on GitHub

https://github.com/felipextrindade/shortest-tutorial-ever