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It could be quite clear and understandable to native english speakers, but a bit hard for me. The sentence is:

There are some programs that you’ll need, where we’ll go over how to download, install, and use in this exercise.

Whereas the next phrases are very clear to me:

where do you live?

I first saw him in Paris, where I lived in the early sixties

this is where I live

I can't understand what is the use of word "where" in the first sentence. Is "where" referred to a place? Or situation? Or it's just a conjunction and means nothing?

The full context is (from the very beginning):

In this exercise, I will be showing you how to get all of the components set up in order to do this lab, as well as many other labs, on the cloud environment. There are some programs that you’ll need, where we’ll go over how to download, install, and use in this exercise. First off, you’ll need to make an account on the IBM Analytics Demo Cloud website, ttps://my.imdemocloud.com/. This account will be needed in order to access the cloud environment. On the main page, press the sign up button.

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  • Where does this sentence come from?
    – SovereignSun
    Apr 7, 2017 at 21:03
  • @SovereignSun IBM Cloud Hadoop Learning Course. I can give you a context.
    – aryndin
    Apr 7, 2017 at 21:16
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    I feel like it's an informal usage meaning something like "regarding which". I think the author is actually using it incorrectly, because he could have just said "which". But informally, we do see where used to mean "regarding" or "in connection with" instead of literally "in a physical place".
    – stangdon
    Apr 7, 2017 at 21:21
  • @LucianSava that as a pronoun or that as a conjunction?
    – aryndin
    Apr 7, 2017 at 21:25
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    They made a mistake. The sentence is ungrammatical in standard English.
    – Araucaria - Not here any more.
    Apr 7, 2017 at 23:23

2 Answers 2

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Your English instincts are good. The sentence is not well written.

There are some programs that you’ll need, where we’ll go over how to download, install, and use in this exercise.

In this sentence, where is incorrect. There is no place or set of conditions that would warrant using the word where. It would be easy to fix the sentence by changing it to the following:

There are some programs that you'll need, and we'll go over how to download, install, and use them in this exercise.

Technical writing is often substandard and ungrammatical. Very smart people learn how to write in one language but never learn to write well in others. Such is life, I suppose.

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The site is where the item will be located. Where typically refers to a place.

Example: Where are you? -Which place are you? Were you moving? -Have you moved?

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  • This answer would be more helpful if your explanation were a little longer.
    – Ringo
    Apr 8, 2017 at 1:42

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