5 ms·

I think what a lot of people don’t get about the Unix command line is that learning to use the tool is part of the experience. Sure I forget the precise flags t

I think what a lot of people don’t get about the Unix command line is that learning to use the tool is part of the experience. Sure I forget the precise flags to get various tools doing what I need, but browsing the man page and rediscovering the breadth of the tool is half the beauty.

jahewson 4y ago
What? That’s some intense Stockholm syndrome right there.
- a-dub 4y ago
  nah. learning unix was fun. having all the documentation online and in an easily called up and consistent format made it possible. microcomputer operating systems didn't have things like "man -k" and while we can complain all day here till we're blue in the face about small quirks, it was light-years beyond the crap that was going on in microcomputer operating systems. even when doing windows or embedded development with tools like visual studio or wrs tornado, i've always insisted on having mkl or cygwin for command line tasks.
- cpach 4y ago
  How so? I remember the times before I learned Bash and the Unix userland. Those where dark times. I was stuck on Windows 98, which I really didn’t like. It just felt so needlessly crippled. When I discovered Bash, Debian, the Unix way, it felt like a breath of fresh air. These days I’m on macOS. And one of the best things about it is that it’s a great desktop operating system, with a Unix under the hood. The userland Apple ships is quite dated, but that’s easily solvable by installing GNU Coreutils etc via Homebrew.
hvs 4y ago
The only feeling I've gotten looking at a man page is, "well, I don't have to time to dig through all of this. Guess I'll just look at stack overflow which will have my exact use case and required parameters."
- lrobinovitch 4y ago
  I love tldr for this https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr
- layer8 4y ago
  In my opinion, the EXAMPLES section should be near the top of the man page and include the most common usages.

jahewson 4y ago

What? That’s some intense Stockholm syndrome right there.

a-dub 4y ago
nah. learning unix was fun. having all the documentation online and in an easily called up and consistent format made it possible. microcomputer operating systems didn't have things like "man -k" and while we can complain all day here till we're blue in the face about small quirks, it was light-years beyond the crap that was going on in microcomputer operating systems. even when doing windows or embedded development with tools like visual studio or wrs tornado, i've always insisted on having mkl or cygwin for command line tasks.
cpach 4y ago
How so? I remember the times before I learned Bash and the Unix userland. Those where dark times. I was stuck on Windows 98, which I really didn’t like. It just felt so needlessly crippled. When I discovered Bash, Debian, the Unix way, it felt like a breath of fresh air. These days I’m on macOS. And one of the best things about it is that it’s a great desktop operating system, with a Unix under the hood. The userland Apple ships is quite dated, but that’s easily solvable by installing GNU Coreutils etc via Homebrew.

hvs 4y ago

The only feeling I've gotten looking at a man page is, "well, I don't have to time to dig through all of this. Guess I'll just look at stack overflow which will have my exact use case and required parameters."

lrobinovitch 4y ago
I love tldr for this https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr
layer8 4y ago
In my opinion, the EXAMPLES section should be near the top of the man page and include the most common usages.