How To Tutorials

Everyone loves tutorials, especially when they are very pertinent to a new thing you want to learn. I find most times its quicker to read a simple blog post on how to setup a new framework/library/package than it is to read the official documentation.

However, sometimes when following along with even the most basic of tutorials, you are bound to encounter some erroneous errors. These can stem from conflicting package versions, changed/deprecated apis, etc. With some trial and error and/or googling, there’s a good chance you could fix the problem without too much effort.

This scenario is perfectly alright in regards to an experienced developer, but what about a new, budding one, whose every encounter with an error message can be quite daunting and a turnoff. The question is then: how do we remove these and similar problems for newcomers?

I’ve seen the four following ways:

Use exact versions when installing packages:

npm install react@16.0.0 –save
Include the entirety of your package.json files (or at least the dependencies) as either a codeblock or a gist for easy copy and pasting.
```
 "dependencies": {
   "react": "16.0.0",
   "react-dom": "16.0.0"
 }
```
Add a save-exact config set for your npm settings to ensure that any packages you install uses the exact current version if you don’t want to have to remember step 1. Simply turn turn the config on:

npm config set save-exact=true
Specify which version of node you are using. NodeJS has a rapid release rate and most likely a reader will be on a later version than when you initially wrote the tutorial. To make your post future-proof, state the version you are currently using and include links to node version managers, preferably your own post on how to setup one. Something simple, like my own, is will suffice.

Of course, there are many other small tips and tricks to make your posts stand the test of time, but nothing beats the above suggestions and maybe, once in a while, going down memory lane and doing incremental update.