3 ms·

It's not insulting to point out that the instructions are very simple, easy to follow, and easy to understand. Everyone here is smart enough to understand these

by nknight 14y ago

It's not insulting to point out that the instructions are very simple, easy to follow, and easy to understand. Everyone here is smart enough to understand these things, and it's utterly bewildering that they angrily refuse to spend 5 minutes learning about something new in order to use something new.

talmand 14y ago
Ah, but to the people who may have trouble with the instructions (for whatever reason) or using the product beyond the instructions it is quite insulting. It is a direct insult to their intelligence and/or their ability for no good reason. That attitude does nothing to help our community, especially the people who are new to all this. Let's imagine a company creates some form of hardware widget that requires some form of setup before it can be used. Initially the setup involves four steps that the company feels is "simple". Now, let's say a number of their customers have trouble with those simple instructions for different reasons. What's the proper response from that company? A: Maybe we should think over the instructions to identify some problem spots as to why people are having trouble? Maybe we should ask some of these people what part are they having trouble with? Maybe we should consider a more in-depth explanation to people who have never used a similar device before? B: If people aren't smart enough to figure out our simple instructions then they're too stupid to use our product. We could just ignore them but instead we'll insult them because they just don't get it. After all, if they're in our industry then they should already know how to do this. I'm not saying that everyone should use response A, since most likely the problem has been answered somewhere. But too many people go with response B with absolutely no benefit to anyone in any way.
- nknight 14y ago
  http://help.github.com/win-set-up-git/ http://help.github.com/win-set-up-git/ Please, bring me someone who actually had trouble with those instructions, and not because they freaked out at the first sign of a command line. They must have actually read them, including the expandable bits, made a serious effort to follow them, and failed.
  - talmand 14y ago
    In most cases you are probably correct, I'm not really commenting on those particular instructions. I'm just making an observation about the responses based on comments people give about problems they are having. I've read through the instructions and they do seem straight-forward enough. In fact, they are actually quite nice. But that still does not mean that some people will not have problems along the way. Not that I have any evidence to back this up but I can think of a few possibilities of why people may have problems: 1: The installer keeps failing for some unexplainable reason. Maybe they don't have the user rights, maybe the IT department is blocking it, whatever other possible install problems. You can't assume that everyone will understand why the installer is having issues on their particular computer as compared to another. We're already seeing reports like this for the new installer just released, I guess those people can't follow the simplest instructions of double-clicking an exe installer correctly. Right? 2: When they get to the line ending conversions part; what if they don't understand the options and abandon the process? Remember, some of these people are new to Git and without some hand-holding they may feel lost. In the screenshot I see there's no recommended option. So it's up to the user to pick the one they need without knowing what they need. Unless there's someone to point it out. And considering some people's attitudes about noobs doing the "wrong" thing then options like that are rather important to consider properly. Do you want to bet whether someone has complained about someone else picking the Windows-style checkout? 3: Even though the instructions are nicely laid out, not everyone is accustomed to the command line. I bet there's a huge number of Windows users who have never used the command line. Even with simple instructions there's the possibility for mistakes. There's even an extra section just for SSH that clearly shows that some people have issues with that part, even Github is trying to address it right there. But they can't possibly cover every conceivable issue. Notice that most of my examples have nothing to do with the instructions themselves, but unforeseen problems that we have to deal with simply because so many people have different computers with different configurations with different networks with different IT departments with their different mandates. The attitude that it's simple for me therefore it must be simple for you is a bad one. The new installer worked for me on the first try, I don't dismiss the ones that did have a problem for some reason. But to further prove my point about my two responses from before, Github decided to go with response A. How do we know? The release of the even simpler all-in-one application that started this whole conversation. Even with the "simple" instructions that have been pointed out, Github decided to listen about problems with the process and have responded with an even easier method to accomplish the same task. Even go above and beyond. That is the mark of a good software developer/company/project. These are people trying to be inclusive, not exclusive. Sadly, too many people in this thread decided to go with response B. Thankfully, Github disagrees with that attitude.
- bitserf 14y ago
  People telling you to follow the instructions are not questioning your intelligence. They're telling you to you know, follow the instructions. Because they work. If you don't want to do that, you now have the option not to.
darklajid 14y ago
Here you ask for five minutes of learning, later in this thread you seem to (correct me) expect people to get a good grasp on ssh and key management to avoid being 'dangerous'. Is both correct? Or would you agree that 5min to learn how ssh works, even for a broad overview, is not exactly helping / changing anything.
- nknight 14y ago
  Two different issues got mixed together here, and I wasn't good at distinguishing them in my comments. It should take five minutes for them to learn the basics of public key crypto so that their eyes don't glaze over when you say "public key", "private key", "fingerprint", or "RSA". I consider this basic knowledge absolutely essential for anyone using these concepts, even indirectly. Without it, you're dangerous. Once those concepts are in place, it shouldn't even take five minutes for them to understand what SSH is doing, because SSH is a very simple and obvious application of the concepts. It should be self-evident from the brief discussions in github's instructions what is going on. And once you've taken the five minutes to understand the concepts, not being dangerous is likewise simple and obvious: * Put a good passphrase on your key. * Don't share your key with others. * Don't type in the passphrase for your key on any computer you don't trust at least as much as your own. Notice how these aren't fundamentally different from protecting a password. We are talking about inherently intelligent people with a good capacity for learning. It is mind-boggling to me that anyone would argue that these people should not have to spend five minutes to understand at even the most basic, limited level, how critical tools they want to use work.

by nknight 14y ago

talmand 14y ago

Ah, but to the people who may have trouble with the instructions (for whatever reason) or using the product beyond the instructions it is quite insulting. It is a direct insult to their intelligence and/or their ability for no good reason. That attitude does nothing to help our community, especially the people who are new to all this. Let's imagine a company creates some form of hardware widget that requires some form of setup before it can be used. Initially the setup involves four steps that the company feels is "simple". Now, let's say a number of their customers have trouble with those simple instructions for different reasons. What's the proper response from that company? A: Maybe we should think over the instructions to identify some problem spots as to why people are having trouble? Maybe we should ask some of these people what part are they having trouble with? Maybe we should consider a more in-depth explanation to people who have never used a similar device before? B: If people aren't smart enough to figure out our simple instructions then they're too stupid to use our product. We could just ignore them but instead we'll insult them because they just don't get it. After all, if they're in our industry then they should already know how to do this. I'm not saying that everyone should use response A, since most likely the problem has been answered somewhere. But too many people go with response B with absolutely no benefit to anyone in any way.

nknight 14y ago
http://help.github.com/win-set-up-git/ http://help.github.com/win-set-up-git/ Please, bring me someone who actually had trouble with those instructions, and not because they freaked out at the first sign of a command line. They must have actually read them, including the expandable bits, made a serious effort to follow them, and failed.
- talmand 14y ago
  In most cases you are probably correct, I'm not really commenting on those particular instructions. I'm just making an observation about the responses based on comments people give about problems they are having. I've read through the instructions and they do seem straight-forward enough. In fact, they are actually quite nice. But that still does not mean that some people will not have problems along the way. Not that I have any evidence to back this up but I can think of a few possibilities of why people may have problems: 1: The installer keeps failing for some unexplainable reason. Maybe they don't have the user rights, maybe the IT department is blocking it, whatever other possible install problems. You can't assume that everyone will understand why the installer is having issues on their particular computer as compared to another. We're already seeing reports like this for the new installer just released, I guess those people can't follow the simplest instructions of double-clicking an exe installer correctly. Right? 2: When they get to the line ending conversions part; what if they don't understand the options and abandon the process? Remember, some of these people are new to Git and without some hand-holding they may feel lost. In the screenshot I see there's no recommended option. So it's up to the user to pick the one they need without knowing what they need. Unless there's someone to point it out. And considering some people's attitudes about noobs doing the "wrong" thing then options like that are rather important to consider properly. Do you want to bet whether someone has complained about someone else picking the Windows-style checkout? 3: Even though the instructions are nicely laid out, not everyone is accustomed to the command line. I bet there's a huge number of Windows users who have never used the command line. Even with simple instructions there's the possibility for mistakes. There's even an extra section just for SSH that clearly shows that some people have issues with that part, even Github is trying to address it right there. But they can't possibly cover every conceivable issue. Notice that most of my examples have nothing to do with the instructions themselves, but unforeseen problems that we have to deal with simply because so many people have different computers with different configurations with different networks with different IT departments with their different mandates. The attitude that it's simple for me therefore it must be simple for you is a bad one. The new installer worked for me on the first try, I don't dismiss the ones that did have a problem for some reason. But to further prove my point about my two responses from before, Github decided to go with response A. How do we know? The release of the even simpler all-in-one application that started this whole conversation. Even with the "simple" instructions that have been pointed out, Github decided to listen about problems with the process and have responded with an even easier method to accomplish the same task. Even go above and beyond. That is the mark of a good software developer/company/project. These are people trying to be inclusive, not exclusive. Sadly, too many people in this thread decided to go with response B. Thankfully, Github disagrees with that attitude.
bitserf 14y ago
People telling you to follow the instructions are not questioning your intelligence. They're telling you to you know, follow the instructions. Because they work. If you don't want to do that, you now have the option not to.

darklajid 14y ago

Here you ask for five minutes of learning, later in this thread you seem to (correct me) expect people to get a good grasp on ssh and key management to avoid being 'dangerous'. Is both correct? Or would you agree that 5min to learn how ssh works, even for a broad overview, is not exactly helping / changing anything.

nknight 14y ago
Two different issues got mixed together here, and I wasn't good at distinguishing them in my comments. It should take five minutes for them to learn the basics of public key crypto so that their eyes don't glaze over when you say "public key", "private key", "fingerprint", or "RSA". I consider this basic knowledge absolutely essential for anyone using these concepts, even indirectly. Without it, you're dangerous. Once those concepts are in place, it shouldn't even take five minutes for them to understand what SSH is doing, because SSH is a very simple and obvious application of the concepts. It should be self-evident from the brief discussions in github's instructions what is going on. And once you've taken the five minutes to understand the concepts, not being dangerous is likewise simple and obvious: * Put a good passphrase on your key. * Don't share your key with others. * Don't type in the passphrase for your key on any computer you don't trust at least as much as your own. Notice how these aren't fundamentally different from protecting a password. We are talking about inherently intelligent people with a good capacity for learning. It is mind-boggling to me that anyone would argue that these people should not have to spend five minutes to understand at even the most basic, limited level, how critical tools they want to use work.