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When I was young, we didn't have StackOverflow or Google. We had to hike through snow to access the internet at all, uphill both ways! In those days, we would

When I was young, we didn't have StackOverflow or Google. We had to hike through snow to access the internet at all, uphill both ways! In those days, we would usually read the manual when we needed to dig past a surface-level understanding of how things work. The manuals are dry and dense, but they're much easier to read with modern niceties like "Ctrl+F". IMO, this is one of the reasons that people recommend using software with a long track record. If you have a question about some parameter in a systemd service script, and the internet doesn't have a ready made answer, the details are all written down in the manual. https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man5/systemd.service.5.html https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man5/systemd.service.5.... Plenty of modern tools have comprehensive detailed docs like this. Python, Go, even most widely-used JS frameworks. The primary sources are often downranked in search engines because they don't sell ads, but it's a good idea to find and bookmark them when you start working with a new technology. RTFM!

mhuffman 4y ago
>In those days, we would usually read the manual when we needed to dig past a surface-level understanding of how things work. The manuals are dry and dense, but they're much easier to read with modern niceties like "Ctrl+F". Then, after that didn't work, we had to go to find the weird bearded guy that didn't like to talk to people, but knew everything. He would usually tell you the answer, but in a condescending way that made you understand that you only came to him in "emergencies" and that you were kind of stupid for asking an "obvious" question. Actually, now that I think of it, that is stackoverflow now! Thank god message boards started taking off! ... but sadly, then the "real" Internet came and killed it. :-(
- clarge1120 4y ago
  Before the real internet came and killed the forums, the weird bearded guy would lurk on the forums. He's the guy who makes you answer general questions like, "Why would you want to do that?" "What's this for?" "Did you try searching before asking such a stupid question?"
  - plastiquebeech 4y ago
    Those are the same questions that people ask on SO, although the respondents aren't exclusively men with beards. OP bemoaned how people on StackOverflow would tell you not to do what you're asking about. Reference material is not the cause of that "weird bearded guy" problem, but it is one possible solution. We're talking about software developers, not wizards. It's not like you have to offer a dram of blood and draw a pentagram with salt before you approach the ancient grimoires.
    - mhuffman 4y ago
      >We're talking about software developers, not wizards. It's not like you have to offer a dram of blood and draw a pentagram with salt before you approach the ancient grimoires. Back then, it seemed a lot like that!
    - marcosdumay 4y ago
      > Those are the same questions that people ask on SO On the good threads that become helpful, yeah. On most of it, no, those are not the questions people ask there. They will focus on unrelated marginal issues, try to refuse to answer the question, just assume the reason the person is doing it (even when explicitly told on the question), and just throw wrong answers on the wall to see if they stick. (Granted, throwing things on the wall is a useful way to answer some questions, but not all.) It's good that Google rewards the first kind of thread, but the second one is what sends people away from the platform.
      - ryandrake 4y ago
        I've seen SO answerers who don't know the answer to a question try to force it into an "X-Y problem" and steer it until the question turned into something they could answer. Q: "I'm trying to configure Foo to produce Bar, but it's giving me this error!" A1: "What are you really trying to do?" [Unsaid: I don't know how to produce Bar either] A2: "You should not be trying to produce Bar. Instead you should produce Baz. I know how to do that--follow the following steps..." A3: "Producing Bar will not solve what I imagine your goal is. In the general case, you may need to produce many different results, which I would rather answer about..." Q: "Uhh, thanks everyone, but I'm just trying to configure Foo to produce Bar."
BirAdam 4y ago
Documentation now is no where near the quality of older stuff. The GW BASIC manual is awesome. The manual for WordStar, PC-DOS, COBOL-80, and so on... these were marvelous. The thing is... languages were smaller because they hadn't started the accretion of thousands of libraries and frameworks. In my experience, every language out there is somewhat easy to learn and master. The ecosystem around it is an insane and ever-growing Katamri Damacy of (largely) crap. We all must know it, must use it, and must contribute to it because no one trusts the work of the individual and only the work of an aggregate of individuals... people often don't even trust their own code.
- imiric 4y ago
  > Documentation now is no where near the quality of older stuff. I wouldn't make a blanket statement either way, but there are certainly counterexamples to this: - The mpv manual[1] is a work of art. - The Arch Linux wiki[2] is a treasure trove of information for not just Arch-specific topics, but Linux in general. - MDN[3] is the defacto standard for any web documentation. - The PostgreSQL[4] documentation is quite thorough and high quality. What I think explains your point are two things: 1. There's just a vast amount of software since those early days. "Software is eating the world", and it's realistically impossible for most of it to be well documented. 2. A lot of information is spread out and produced by users of the software; in books, on blogs, tutorials, forums, videos, etc. Sure, this might be seen as a failure of the software authors to produce good documentation, but many of these resources wouldn't exist if the web didn't make them accessible. In some ways this is better than having a single source of reference, as you can benefit from the collective wisdom of the hivemind, rather than only from what the author thought relevant to document. [1]: https://mpv.io/manual/ https://mpv.io/manual/ [2]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/ https://wiki.archlinux.org/ [3]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/ [4]: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/ https://www.postgresql.org/docs/
  - lmm 4y ago
    Some software has good documentation nowadays. Back in the day, it was de riguer; no-one would dare to release something without a full manual, if only because they knew it was they who'd end up fielding user questions if they didn't.
theGnuMe 4y ago
a chatgpt program trained on just unix man pages would be interesting.

mhuffman 4y ago

>In those days, we would usually read the manual when we needed to dig past a surface-level understanding of how things work. The manuals are dry and dense, but they're much easier to read with modern niceties like "Ctrl+F". Then, after that didn't work, we had to go to find the weird bearded guy that didn't like to talk to people, but knew everything. He would usually tell you the answer, but in a condescending way that made you understand that you only came to him in "emergencies" and that you were kind of stupid for asking an "obvious" question. Actually, now that I think of it, that is stackoverflow now! Thank god message boards started taking off! ... but sadly, then the "real" Internet came and killed it. :-(

clarge1120 4y ago
Before the real internet came and killed the forums, the weird bearded guy would lurk on the forums. He's the guy who makes you answer general questions like, "Why would you want to do that?" "What's this for?" "Did you try searching before asking such a stupid question?"
- plastiquebeech 4y ago
  Those are the same questions that people ask on SO, although the respondents aren't exclusively men with beards. OP bemoaned how people on StackOverflow would tell you not to do what you're asking about. Reference material is not the cause of that "weird bearded guy" problem, but it is one possible solution. We're talking about software developers, not wizards. It's not like you have to offer a dram of blood and draw a pentagram with salt before you approach the ancient grimoires.
  - mhuffman 4y ago
    >We're talking about software developers, not wizards. It's not like you have to offer a dram of blood and draw a pentagram with salt before you approach the ancient grimoires. Back then, it seemed a lot like that!
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    > Those are the same questions that people ask on SO On the good threads that become helpful, yeah. On most of it, no, those are not the questions people ask there. They will focus on unrelated marginal issues, try to refuse to answer the question, just assume the reason the person is doing it (even when explicitly told on the question), and just throw wrong answers on the wall to see if they stick. (Granted, throwing things on the wall is a useful way to answer some questions, but not all.) It's good that Google rewards the first kind of thread, but the second one is what sends people away from the platform.
    - ryandrake 4y ago
      I've seen SO answerers who don't know the answer to a question try to force it into an "X-Y problem" and steer it until the question turned into something they could answer. Q: "I'm trying to configure Foo to produce Bar, but it's giving me this error!" A1: "What are you really trying to do?" [Unsaid: I don't know how to produce Bar either] A2: "You should not be trying to produce Bar. Instead you should produce Baz. I know how to do that--follow the following steps..." A3: "Producing Bar will not solve what I imagine your goal is. In the general case, you may need to produce many different results, which I would rather answer about..." Q: "Uhh, thanks everyone, but I'm just trying to configure Foo to produce Bar."

BirAdam 4y ago

Documentation now is no where near the quality of older stuff. The GW BASIC manual is awesome. The manual for WordStar, PC-DOS, COBOL-80, and so on... these were marvelous. The thing is... languages were smaller because they hadn't started the accretion of thousands of libraries and frameworks. In my experience, every language out there is somewhat easy to learn and master. The ecosystem around it is an insane and ever-growing Katamri Damacy of (largely) crap. We all must know it, must use it, and must contribute to it because no one trusts the work of the individual and only the work of an aggregate of individuals... people often don't even trust their own code.

imiric 4y ago
> Documentation now is no where near the quality of older stuff. I wouldn't make a blanket statement either way, but there are certainly counterexamples to this: - The mpv manual[1] is a work of art. - The Arch Linux wiki[2] is a treasure trove of information for not just Arch-specific topics, but Linux in general. - MDN[3] is the defacto standard for any web documentation. - The PostgreSQL[4] documentation is quite thorough and high quality. What I think explains your point are two things: 1. There's just a vast amount of software since those early days. "Software is eating the world", and it's realistically impossible for most of it to be well documented. 2. A lot of information is spread out and produced by users of the software; in books, on blogs, tutorials, forums, videos, etc. Sure, this might be seen as a failure of the software authors to produce good documentation, but many of these resources wouldn't exist if the web didn't make them accessible. In some ways this is better than having a single source of reference, as you can benefit from the collective wisdom of the hivemind, rather than only from what the author thought relevant to document. [1]: https://mpv.io/manual/ https://mpv.io/manual/ [2]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/ https://wiki.archlinux.org/ [3]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/ https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/ [4]: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/ https://www.postgresql.org/docs/
- lmm 4y ago
  Some software has good documentation nowadays. Back in the day, it was de riguer; no-one would dare to release something without a full manual, if only because they knew it was they who'd end up fielding user questions if they didn't.

theGnuMe 4y ago

a chatgpt program trained on just unix man pages would be interesting.