This is foundational project for the educational system and course structure we will be creating here at Chromatone Academy. Tutorials, How-to Guides, Explanatios and Reference are the units which will be gathered into distinct modules and sequenced in particular courses. This enables much more actionable and hands on learning process for such complex topics as Music Theory, Production, Performance and Web-Development. This is an experimental approach welcoming students to participate in courses creation too.

The way I see the difference between tutorials and how-to guides is that while they are both concerned with practical steps, only how-to guides are task-oriented, whereas tutorials are concerned with learning.

In a how-to guide, the steps are determined by the user's task/problem; in a tutorial, the learner might not even know what the problems are. In a how-to guide, the user is responsible for knowing what they need to know; in a tutorial, you the teacher are responsible for choosing things for the user to do through which they will acquire skills. – Daniele Procida (EvilDMP)

Diátaxis

A systematic approach to technical documentation authoring.

Diátaxis is a way of thinking about and doing documentation.

It prescribes approaches to content, architecture and form that emerge from a systematic approach to understanding the needs of documentation users.

Diátaxis, from the Ancient Greek δῐᾰ́τᾰξῐς: dia (“across”) and taxis (“arrangement”).

Diátaxis identifies four distinct needs, and four corresponding forms of documentation - tutorials, how-to guides, technical reference and explanation. It places them in a systematic relationship, and proposes that documentation should itself be organised around the structures of those needs.

Diátaxis solves problems related to documentation content (what to write), style (how to write it) and architecture (how to organise it).

As well as serving the users of documentation, Diátaxis has value for documentation creators and maintainers. It is light-weight, easy to grasp and straightforward to apply. It doesn’t impose implementation constraints. It brings an active principle of quality to documentation that helps maintainers think effectively about their own work.