4 ms·

Nah, man pages are usually completely useless. I use man when I remember exactly what I want to do and just aren't sure if the flag was -f or -F. For everything

Nah, man pages are usually completely useless. I use man when I remember exactly what I want to do and just aren't sure if the flag was -f or -F. For everything else there's google.

peatmoss 12y ago
Being a few years gone from working purely in tech, and having a decade of OSX desktop usage finally made me feel I'd gotten complacent. So I installed OpenBSD. Two things of note have happened: 1. I routinely need to look things up that are a bit murky in the deep recesses of my memory. 2. I am reminded continually of how nice it is to have man pages that are well written, are easily searchable, reference appropriate other pages, and are helpful enough to remind you of big picture considerations that you didn't realize you were facing when looking for a commandline flag.
stephenr 12y ago
Can you give an example of what you might turn to google for (and what you'd search for) that is more productive than checking a manpage/help output?
- Anderkent 12y ago
  OK, recent simple example: Google query: git display file at revision. Immediate answer (without even having to click any links, it's in the result description): `git show revision:file` Total time: 5 seconds Trying to reproduce with man and help: man git search for display, finds nothing start scrolling down notice git-show (show various types of objects); sounds like a likely candidate git show <revision> <file> ..no output git show -h usage: git log [<options>] [<since>..<until>] [[--] <path>...] or: git show [options] <object>... .. useful man git show man git-show OPTIONS <object>... The names of objects to show. For a more complete list of ways to spell object names, see "SPECIFYING REVISIONS" section in git-rev-parse(1). man git-rev-parse a lot about specifying revisions, nothing about how actually specify a file Give up. Google it.
  - needs 12y ago
    One reason to keep reading man pages is because you will likely discover new thing you did not expected. Also reading man pages help you to understand the tool philosophy/workflow, if the man page is well writen (which is often the case). This hold for any kind of documentation as well. When I google something, I usually do not remember the answer to my question, the only thing I remember is the keyword to put in my futur query to get the same answer. You will get your answer quicker, but you wont learn much. So personally, I prefer reading man pages (when I can) than use google.
- yAnonymous 12y ago
  I too find it much easier to google for actual working examples of commands rather than the abstract documentation in the manual. Rsync for example, where trailing slashes make a difference and it's not obvious from skipping over the manual. Looking at working code/commands often works better than piecing it together from the manual imo.

Nah, man pages are usually completely useless. I use man when I remember exactly what I want to do and just aren't sure if the flag was -f or -F. For everything else there's google.

peatmoss 12y ago

Being a few years gone from working purely in tech, and having a decade of OSX desktop usage finally made me feel I'd gotten complacent. So I installed OpenBSD. Two things of note have happened: 1. I routinely need to look things up that are a bit murky in the deep recesses of my memory. 2. I am reminded continually of how nice it is to have man pages that are well written, are easily searchable, reference appropriate other pages, and are helpful enough to remind you of big picture considerations that you didn't realize you were facing when looking for a commandline flag.

stephenr 12y ago

Can you give an example of what you might turn to google for (and what you'd search for) that is more productive than checking a manpage/help output?

Anderkent 12y ago
OK, recent simple example: Google query: git display file at revision. Immediate answer (without even having to click any links, it's in the result description): `git show revision:file` Total time: 5 seconds Trying to reproduce with man and help: man git search for display, finds nothing start scrolling down notice git-show (show various types of objects); sounds like a likely candidate git show <revision> <file> ..no output git show -h usage: git log [<options>] [<since>..<until>] [[--] <path>...] or: git show [options] <object>... .. useful man git show man git-show OPTIONS <object>... The names of objects to show. For a more complete list of ways to spell object names, see "SPECIFYING REVISIONS" section in git-rev-parse(1). man git-rev-parse a lot about specifying revisions, nothing about how actually specify a file Give up. Google it.
- needs 12y ago
  One reason to keep reading man pages is because you will likely discover new thing you did not expected. Also reading man pages help you to understand the tool philosophy/workflow, if the man page is well writen (which is often the case). This hold for any kind of documentation as well. When I google something, I usually do not remember the answer to my question, the only thing I remember is the keyword to put in my futur query to get the same answer. You will get your answer quicker, but you wont learn much. So personally, I prefer reading man pages (when I can) than use google.
yAnonymous 12y ago
I too find it much easier to google for actual working examples of commands rather than the abstract documentation in the manual. Rsync for example, where trailing slashes make a difference and it's not obvious from skipping over the manual. Looking at working code/commands often works better than piecing it together from the manual imo.