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>The Linux man pages are upside down. Examples don't come till the very end, if at all. You only learn the tool once. Every subsequent time you visit the man p

>The Linux man pages are upside down. Examples don't come till the very end, if at all. You only learn the tool once. Every subsequent time you visit the man page, the information you're probably looking for is frontloaded. Just scroll to the bottom if you want examples?

combatentropy 6y ago
Fair points. After all, I know the keyboard shortcut to jump to the bottom (Ctrl-G).
- teddyh 6y ago
  According to less(1), the key is: “G or > or ESC->”.
  - combatentropy 6y ago
    Sorry, I meant Shift-G. I can no longer edit that comment.
    - coliveira 6y ago
      In most keyboards Shift-G is the same as G, otherwise it would be g.
      - combatentropy 6y ago
        Ha ha, you're right, in a way. It depends on whether you take G to mean the figure on the keyboard or the figure on the screen. The figure on most keyboards is G. Yet when you press it, it puts on the screen, g. Chromebooks are better in this way. Their keyboards are labeled in lowercase. I actually went back and forth between saying Shift-G, or just G, for this very reason. So I erred on the side of clarity.
        Reelin 6y ago
        I thought the way you wrote it was clear but these comments got me curious what the various conventions might be so I took a quick look at :help in Vim (since it lists an awful lot of key bindings). I'm now officially confused and don't think you can go too far wrong. In some contexts :help notates things as characters (ex zh, zH, and z<CR>). In other cases I'm seeing things written as <S-F11> and <C-G>. There's also CTRL-H (instead of <C-H>) but I'm not seeing shift written out like that for whatever reason. Sometimes they get mixed (I'm not sure what the rules are) such as for hh<Space> and hh<C-]>. Amusingly enough, :help appears to treat Meta-{char} as case sensitive but CTRL-{char} as case insensitive (I assume there's a reason). I also spotted a <kPlus> (for the keypad). What an amusingly pointless distraction!
  - devenblake 6y ago
    You can also use the key on many keyboards labeled "End".
oblio 6y ago
> You only learn the tool once. Every subsequent time you visit the man page, the information you're probably looking for is frontloaded. Just scroll to the bottom if you want examples? This is false for most tools we don't use daily. It's false even for tools we do use daily, in some cases (I have to google git commands every month or so for commands I use rarely). Most people are and remain perpetual intermediates: https://blog.codinghorror.com/defending-perpetual-intermediacy/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/defending-perpetual-intermedia... The experts are the exception.
- sixstringtheory 6y ago
  I bristled just now at the opportunity to have my first strong disagreement with Mr. Spolsky. Then I read the article you linked. I don’t think it means what you think it means. He’s talking about users of the software, not developers. And I know, I know, developers are users of software too, perhaps more than the average user. But then he links to this article about homo logicus [0] in which he begins: > Of all the professional hubris I've observed in software developers, perhaps the greatest sin of all is that we consider ourselves typical users. > We are experts. Who could possibly design software better than us superusers? What most developers don't realize is how freakishly outside the norm we are. We're not even remotely average-- we are the edge conditions. Honestly, if you’re a hobbyist or moonlight as a FOSS contributor, fine, nbd. But if I found out an alleged professional working for me writing software was content to never figure something out like a git branch issue in the short term and grow over the long term in their total skillsets, I’d want them gone. I wouldn’t want a lazy, mediocre carpenter to build my house either. I’m perfectly content to let them build a ramshackle residence for themself where nobody has to suffer because of it. [0]: https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-homo-logicus/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-homo-logi...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - oblio 6y ago
    > I wouldn’t want a lazy, mediocre carpenter to build my house either. I’m perfectly content to let them build a ramshackle residence for themselves where nobody has to suffer because of it. This is kind of funny since I'm European and we view most US houses as low quality McMansions :-))
porknubbins 6y ago
I always thought someday I would become a hardcore Linux hacker and know all the commands and flags but the reality is I have to relearn every time. Who spends that much time just in the command line these days? I’m sure some people do but I don’t know what they do unless its CTFs or security related.
- viraptor 6y ago
  Devops-style workload means a lot of the time spent in the console. Even then, I lookup the quoting difference between $* and $@ every single time, and how to use `read`. Or more likely decide it's time to drop bash at that point...
  - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
    docker save | xz is about the longest pipeline I used, and since compression doesn't provide any meaningful advantage there (except for maybe checksum), I reduced it to just docker save.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  I’m not sure why you think CTFs/security has an extra focus on the command line? Most of the security people I know spend their days staring into IDA…
  - Ekaros 6y ago
    As security person I run stuff in command line as many tools are there and they really are mostly scripts. I don't really need to do much shell magic to do stuff. If I actually need something special I will write a python script.
- Reelin 6y ago
  > Who spends that much time just in the command line these days? Just stop using GUI utilities. It really is that simple. If you just don't use them you'll end up in a shell out of necessity because you still need to get things done. Of course, the majority of my time is spent in my web browser reading documentation followed closely by vim for writing things. Actual time spent interacting with CLIs is a small minority at the end of the day.
GoblinSlayer 6y ago
It takes a long time to scroll to the bottom of bash man page.

combatentropy 6y ago

Fair points. After all, I know the keyboard shortcut to jump to the bottom (Ctrl-G).

teddyh 6y ago
According to less(1), the key is: “G or > or ESC->”.
- combatentropy 6y ago
  Sorry, I meant Shift-G. I can no longer edit that comment.
  - coliveira 6y ago
    In most keyboards Shift-G is the same as G, otherwise it would be g.
    - combatentropy 6y ago
      Ha ha, you're right, in a way. It depends on whether you take G to mean the figure on the keyboard or the figure on the screen. The figure on most keyboards is G. Yet when you press it, it puts on the screen, g. Chromebooks are better in this way. Their keyboards are labeled in lowercase. I actually went back and forth between saying Shift-G, or just G, for this very reason. So I erred on the side of clarity.
      - Reelin 6y ago
        I thought the way you wrote it was clear but these comments got me curious what the various conventions might be so I took a quick look at :help in Vim (since it lists an awful lot of key bindings). I'm now officially confused and don't think you can go too far wrong. In some contexts :help notates things as characters (ex zh, zH, and z<CR>). In other cases I'm seeing things written as <S-F11> and <C-G>. There's also CTRL-H (instead of <C-H>) but I'm not seeing shift written out like that for whatever reason. Sometimes they get mixed (I'm not sure what the rules are) such as for hh<Space> and hh<C-]>. Amusingly enough, :help appears to treat Meta-{char} as case sensitive but CTRL-{char} as case insensitive (I assume there's a reason). I also spotted a <kPlus> (for the keypad). What an amusingly pointless distraction!
- devenblake 6y ago
  You can also use the key on many keyboards labeled "End".

oblio 6y ago

> You only learn the tool once. Every subsequent time you visit the man page, the information you're probably looking for is frontloaded. Just scroll to the bottom if you want examples? This is false for most tools we don't use daily. It's false even for tools we do use daily, in some cases (I have to google git commands every month or so for commands I use rarely). Most people are and remain perpetual intermediates: https://blog.codinghorror.com/defending-perpetual-intermediacy/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/defending-perpetual-intermedia... The experts are the exception.

sixstringtheory 6y ago
I bristled just now at the opportunity to have my first strong disagreement with Mr. Spolsky. Then I read the article you linked. I don’t think it means what you think it means. He’s talking about users of the software, not developers. And I know, I know, developers are users of software too, perhaps more than the average user. But then he links to this article about homo logicus [0] in which he begins: > Of all the professional hubris I've observed in software developers, perhaps the greatest sin of all is that we consider ourselves typical users. > We are experts. Who could possibly design software better than us superusers? What most developers don't realize is how freakishly outside the norm we are. We're not even remotely average-- we are the edge conditions. Honestly, if you’re a hobbyist or moonlight as a FOSS contributor, fine, nbd. But if I found out an alleged professional working for me writing software was content to never figure something out like a git branch issue in the short term and grow over the long term in their total skillsets, I’d want them gone. I wouldn’t want a lazy, mediocre carpenter to build my house either. I’m perfectly content to let them build a ramshackle residence for themself where nobody has to suffer because of it. [0]: https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-homo-logicus/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-homo-logi...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- oblio 6y ago
  > I wouldn’t want a lazy, mediocre carpenter to build my house either. I’m perfectly content to let them build a ramshackle residence for themselves where nobody has to suffer because of it. This is kind of funny since I'm European and we view most US houses as low quality McMansions :-))

porknubbins 6y ago

I always thought someday I would become a hardcore Linux hacker and know all the commands and flags but the reality is I have to relearn every time. Who spends that much time just in the command line these days? I’m sure some people do but I don’t know what they do unless its CTFs or security related.

viraptor 6y ago
Devops-style workload means a lot of the time spent in the console. Even then, I lookup the quoting difference between $* and $@ every single time, and how to use `read`. Or more likely decide it's time to drop bash at that point...
- GoblinSlayer 6y ago
  docker save | xz is about the longest pipeline I used, and since compression doesn't provide any meaningful advantage there (except for maybe checksum), I reduced it to just docker save.
saagarjha 6y ago
I’m not sure why you think CTFs/security has an extra focus on the command line? Most of the security people I know spend their days staring into IDA…
- Ekaros 6y ago
  As security person I run stuff in command line as many tools are there and they really are mostly scripts. I don't really need to do much shell magic to do stuff. If I actually need something special I will write a python script.
Reelin 6y ago
> Who spends that much time just in the command line these days? Just stop using GUI utilities. It really is that simple. If you just don't use them you'll end up in a shell out of necessity because you still need to get things done. Of course, the majority of my time is spent in my web browser reading documentation followed closely by vim for writing things. Actual time spent interacting with CLIs is a small minority at the end of the day.

GoblinSlayer 6y ago

It takes a long time to scroll to the bottom of bash man page.