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>Also feels like people adopt tools and cobble shit together from google/SO, what happened to RTFM. Sometimes it's easier to google because TFM is written by p
by na85 6y ago
>Also feels like people adopt tools and cobble shit together from google/SO, what happened to RTFM.
Sometimes it's easier to google because TFM is written by people who are intricately familiar with the tool and forget what it's like to be unfamiliar with it.
Look at git for example; the docs are atrocious. Here's the first line under DESCRIPTION for "man git-push":
>Updates remote refs using local refs, while sending objects necessary to complete the given refs.
Not a single bit of explanation as to what the fuck a "ref" is, much less the difference between remote and local refs. If you didn't have someone to explain it to you, this man page would be 100% useless.
- mariusor 6y agoI think that reading the man page for git-push is not reasonable if you don't understand git first. That being the case, the first thing you need to read is the main git man page. At the bottom of it (sadly) you find references to gitrevisions and gitglossary man pages. Those should provide enough information and examples to understand what a ref is, yet probably even these could be better. I'm in full agreement that this is terribly undiscoverable, but if you really want to RTFM, you mustn't stop at just the first page.