He’s a one-trick pony

One trick is all that horse can do

He does one trick only

It’s the principal source of his revenue

These words from a Paul Simon song echo the apparent origin of the phrase “one trick pony.”

Apparently, there’s an O. Henry short story that tells a cautionary tale about this pony’s owner.

(ChatGPT told me about this story—complete with details about the pony’s owner, Jack Dunford. Despite my Google-fu and text of The Complete Works of O. Henry, I haven’t been able to confirm it… but ChatGPT is a whole other topic.)

A literal one-trick pony is a circus animal that performs a single feat.

Maybe it’s a jump, a twirl… But nothing more.

Of course, the phrase has become an idiom and applies to more than ponies now.

I used it in the bad documentation post to describe docs that only cover a single dimension. Usually, these stop at an API reference, for example.

While it makes for a great story, one-trick pony docs won’t help developers join your circus.

They also need:

• Contextual “why this matters” documentation
• Tutorials to take you step-by-step through a project
• Sample apps and code snippets to solve common problems
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​Join an upcoming EvDev presentation to hear from us LIVE! Let’s help you avoid being an idiom—and better engage the developers you’ve already worked so hard to reach.