pleroma.debian.social

Back in the days when I was a kid, Unix man pages where a wee bit more .. descriptive.

@jpmens Bad manpage quality is Linux' birth defect and was made socially acceptable on Linux. And don't anyone dare to educate me about GNU info.

@unixtippse -bash: info: command not found

other than which the only sane way to read info if obliged is by piping the output to |less

@unixtippse @jpmens I dunno man. I still remember when i first discovered that in this thing called linux there are things called manpages, and i systematically read and learned all of them (from debian hammor slink if memory serves - we're talking ~1998-1999). to this day i remember that intensive learning experience fondly, i don't think i ever learned anything that obsessively, with the joy of discovery.
i mean, compare this to documentation on windows or macOS...

@gergolippai how are man pages on macOS not at least as good as on Linux?

@unixtippse

@jpmens the new kids are writing their own man pages: https://tldr.sh/

@giulianopz I don't see any documentation there; https://tldr.inbrowser.app/pages/common/ls is at best a list of snippets somebody's typed in

@jpmens right, it's meant to be a quick and practical reference on a command usage from the programmer's perspective. It cannot really replace man pages but it can help you when all you need is the last section of a man page (usage examples) which sometimes is missing. It's especially useful for beginners.

@giulianopz sadly things like that are causing people to no longer actually read documentation. Instead they copy/paste their way into something which possibly works (or doesn't) without learning what's behind it all.

My opinion and experience.

@jpmens I see your point. But man pages are often hard to read and have a poor information structure. New alternatives are naif and inaccurate sometimes. "The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters", just to abuse a serious quote. Anyway @b0rk has tooted about it several months ago if you are interested: https://social.jvns.ca/@b0rk/111607416578693170