about

eXamPLeS (or eXample PLeaSe) is a site dedicated to providing useful examples.

Technical documentation usually falls into two camps: tutorials and reference.

Tutorials will walk you through doing a toy example. Learn how to use this tool in 10 easy steps - that sort of thing. They’re great for learning some rudimentary syntax. After you’re done, you start wondering how you’re going to do all the things you want to do, that’s when they point you to the reference.

The reference manual is an exhaustive guide of all the different knobs and switches to use the tool. From the general purpose to the most arcane, they will cover everything. Think large book here of terms that may (or may not) be meaningful to you. They were certainly meaningful to the author – but you don’t spend your life working with this tool like they do. So while the docs may have the info you want to know - you may not know the way to ask the question.

So imagine you’ve learned to use the tool and created a few things with it. Time goes by and you haven’t worked with it in a while. You remember some vague things about it. What it does and some of the terms … but you’re not quite sure. What is a container again? What is an image?

What I wanted was a short guide to the most common usage of a tool. I generally know what I want to do - I just don’t remember the specific incantation to get this tool to do it.

So I wrote a website. It works for me. Maybe it’ll work for you.