3 ms·

Very few things grind my gears like having to search through a wall of "--help" output and lengthy list of arguments to find the error that describes the proble

Very few things grind my gears like having to search through a wall of "--help" output and lengthy list of arguments to find the error that describes the problem. Screenfulls of text when the error is "Option 'b' unknown" isn't helpful.

AStonesThrow 2y ago
Oh it's worse than that. Some classes and even supervisors I've had, forced me to read documentation, over and above actually doing stuff
- Thorrez 2y ago
  If you need to learn something (e.g. you're taking a class or your supervisor wants you to learn something), then reading the documentation is a good idea. If you already know the content, but accidentally made a typo and are trying to debug it, then reading the documentation isn't going to help. An error message pointing out the problem will help.
- linsomniac 2y ago
  I had a teacher like that in High School. "I made a mistake in this proof, but I'm not sure what it is." "You have the book for the course, the answer is in there."
- kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
  Would you expect a sports referee to manage a match without knowing the rules of the game?.
  - AStonesThrow 2y ago
    No but the sports referee perhaps specializes in one or a few games/leagues. And at high levels, a referee role is probably similar to physician/lawyer where you'll have annual rule updates/changes, jurisprudence history of past rulings, and conventions/associations of referees where they will be spending money, time and effort when not on the field. Now multiply the referee's game or league types by everything in /usr/bin
- gerad 2y ago
  lol how the sarcasm was lost on hackernews
- sbuk 2y ago
  Reading techical documentation is a skill. It's one that is sorely lacking in IT from develpers to ops. RTFM when learning is a valid lesson in and of itself.
gknoy 2y ago
This seems like it would be solved completely by printing the error message ("option b unknown"), and then also printing the "--help" stuff. You can see the error inthe first line(s), so `head` will make that easy to see, but anyone trying to print the help text will get it.
- linsomniac 2y ago
  Yeah, except both the error and the --help are going to stderr. ;-)

AStonesThrow 2y ago

Oh it's worse than that. Some classes and even supervisors I've had, forced me to read documentation, over and above actually doing stuff

Thorrez 2y ago
If you need to learn something (e.g. you're taking a class or your supervisor wants you to learn something), then reading the documentation is a good idea. If you already know the content, but accidentally made a typo and are trying to debug it, then reading the documentation isn't going to help. An error message pointing out the problem will help.
linsomniac 2y ago
I had a teacher like that in High School. "I made a mistake in this proof, but I'm not sure what it is." "You have the book for the course, the answer is in there."
kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
Would you expect a sports referee to manage a match without knowing the rules of the game?.
- AStonesThrow 2y ago
  No but the sports referee perhaps specializes in one or a few games/leagues. And at high levels, a referee role is probably similar to physician/lawyer where you'll have annual rule updates/changes, jurisprudence history of past rulings, and conventions/associations of referees where they will be spending money, time and effort when not on the field. Now multiply the referee's game or league types by everything in /usr/bin
gerad 2y ago
lol how the sarcasm was lost on hackernews
sbuk 2y ago
Reading techical documentation is a skill. It's one that is sorely lacking in IT from develpers to ops. RTFM when learning is a valid lesson in and of itself.

gknoy 2y ago

This seems like it would be solved completely by printing the error message ("option b unknown"), and then also printing the "--help" stuff. You can see the error inthe first line(s), so `head` will make that easy to see, but anyone trying to print the help text will get it.

linsomniac 2y ago
Yeah, except both the error and the --help are going to stderr. ;-)