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The man pages were broken into competent sections over multiple man pages. About 260 of them on this machine (not really: there is a change-tracking man page pe

by creer 11mo ago

The man pages were broken into competent sections over multiple man pages. About 260 of them on this machine (not really: there is a change-tracking man page per release recently.) The 1st man page is a very compact index to them. After that, each section is long but very searchable. But I can see how many people never even noticed."Man page? what's that? what for?"

Bratmon 11mo ago
But if every user is expected to read the entire manual cover-to-over before asking a question about a four-character operator, what's the point of dividing it into sections?
- creer 11mo ago
  I know you are not serious but let's go with it anyway. Since we have to be welcoming to newbies :-) Not expected to read cover to cover. Cover to cover would be the tutorial / course work. And even then in a layered language like perl 5, the later chapters only when needed. Layered: the language and coursework is written to add one layer of the language after the previous ones. So you can start writing things that do function after just the first layer. Expected to know it's there, navigate through it to find the operators or system variables and that you can search through the thing. There are ~260 perl man pages on this computer - not expected to read them. For damn sure expected to use them. Do read one more section from top to bottom now and then - if the thing is the one fundamental tool in your job!
  - Bratmon 11mo ago
    But that's what the ancestor was trying to do. Then he ran into a symbol he hadn't gotten to yet, asked about it, and got flamed for not reading the full manual!
    - creer 11mo ago
      > flamed for not reading the full manual! It was not for not reading the full manual. It was for not using the manual. Somewhere between "not at all", "not competently", "not persistently". And he was pointed to a perl-specific tool which is made for searching the doc. Not the same thing? And he/they had missed an entire category of symbols. That none of the responses pointed at - their bad on that. That is, all these symbols are described in the same manual section. And used in illustrative examples all over the place. They are not exactly a deep hidden thing. Also, regarding "flamed". No. Not really. They were handed the same response that countless other questions were getting. Anyone frequenting these forums saw them countless times. It is quite possible that it was their first time on that forum / chat and then that the answer was shocking and traumatic. Yes to that. So that in hindsight, the standard response should have included a pointer to a "how to use the doc" doc. That would have helped. Since it was a generation was seemed unaware of the man pages.
      - saghm 11mo ago
        The problem is the implicit assumption that you can throw an entire book at someone and expect them to be able to figure out where to look for each piece of information in it without them knowing beforehand what things even are. If someone hasn't ever seen a variable like `$|` before, it's not necessarily going to be obvious to them what it is, and without knowing how to classify it, they aren't going to know how to tell what chapter it's described in. You're defining the bar for someone to be able to ask a question as high enough that they spent enough time reading through everything to be able to identify it. That's going to be fine for some people, but not everyone learns the same way, and when some people learn better a different way than you, it's not because they're stupid or lazy, but because there's just a lot of variety in what works well or doesn't for people. Of course, you aren't under any obligation to spend time helping people who you don't want to, but if a community as a whole reacts this way when someone asks a question, they're making the bet that the there are enough people who are similar enough to them to sustain things in the future. Given that this both happened years ago to the parent commenter and now again when they tell the story again, it's not really that hard to believe that this might have been common enough that a lot of people experienced it. The entire point of this thread is discussing why Perl has faltered, and your explanation in the last paragraph comes across as basically saying "kids these days..." in slightly different words. I'd argue that even if the kids loved man pages, having a condescending attitude towards them would probably still come through in other ways, and that would have had pretty much the same effect.

by creer 11mo ago

Bratmon 11mo ago

But if every user is expected to read the entire manual cover-to-over before asking a question about a four-character operator, what's the point of dividing it into sections?

creer 11mo ago
I know you are not serious but let's go with it anyway. Since we have to be welcoming to newbies :-) Not expected to read cover to cover. Cover to cover would be the tutorial / course work. And even then in a layered language like perl 5, the later chapters only when needed. Layered: the language and coursework is written to add one layer of the language after the previous ones. So you can start writing things that do function after just the first layer. Expected to know it's there, navigate through it to find the operators or system variables and that you can search through the thing. There are ~260 perl man pages on this computer - not expected to read them. For damn sure expected to use them. Do read one more section from top to bottom now and then - if the thing is the one fundamental tool in your job!
- Bratmon 11mo ago
  But that's what the ancestor was trying to do. Then he ran into a symbol he hadn't gotten to yet, asked about it, and got flamed for not reading the full manual!
  - creer 11mo ago
    > flamed for not reading the full manual! It was not for not reading the full manual. It was for not using the manual. Somewhere between "not at all", "not competently", "not persistently". And he was pointed to a perl-specific tool which is made for searching the doc. Not the same thing? And he/they had missed an entire category of symbols. That none of the responses pointed at - their bad on that. That is, all these symbols are described in the same manual section. And used in illustrative examples all over the place. They are not exactly a deep hidden thing. Also, regarding "flamed". No. Not really. They were handed the same response that countless other questions were getting. Anyone frequenting these forums saw them countless times. It is quite possible that it was their first time on that forum / chat and then that the answer was shocking and traumatic. Yes to that. So that in hindsight, the standard response should have included a pointer to a "how to use the doc" doc. That would have helped. Since it was a generation was seemed unaware of the man pages.
    - saghm 11mo ago
      The problem is the implicit assumption that you can throw an entire book at someone and expect them to be able to figure out where to look for each piece of information in it without them knowing beforehand what things even are. If someone hasn't ever seen a variable like `$|` before, it's not necessarily going to be obvious to them what it is, and without knowing how to classify it, they aren't going to know how to tell what chapter it's described in. You're defining the bar for someone to be able to ask a question as high enough that they spent enough time reading through everything to be able to identify it. That's going to be fine for some people, but not everyone learns the same way, and when some people learn better a different way than you, it's not because they're stupid or lazy, but because there's just a lot of variety in what works well or doesn't for people. Of course, you aren't under any obligation to spend time helping people who you don't want to, but if a community as a whole reacts this way when someone asks a question, they're making the bet that the there are enough people who are similar enough to them to sustain things in the future. Given that this both happened years ago to the parent commenter and now again when they tell the story again, it's not really that hard to believe that this might have been common enough that a lot of people experienced it. The entire point of this thread is discussing why Perl has faltered, and your explanation in the last paragraph comes across as basically saying "kids these days..." in slightly different words. I'd argue that even if the kids loved man pages, having a condescending attitude towards them would probably still come through in other ways, and that would have had pretty much the same effect.