Careful there, Les. Remember that your VM console is still a 3215... ;-)
-Chip-
On 8/18/10 18:47 Les Koehler said:
Not to mention the fact that at the very heart of shell scripting and
Unix commands is the idea that the user is sitting at a 33 baud teletype!
Les
zMan wrote:
Jack Woehr wrote:
The Unix manuals are fabulous. They're not corporate expiatiation of
contractual responsibility. They're the heart of the developer being
poured
out in front of you.
I'm not sure "fabulous" would be my description -- "barely usable" is
more like it in far too many cases. The quality varies wildly, and is
very often completely lacking in usable examples. It was over three
decades ago that my father said "My kingdom for an example!" when
trying to use a UNIX man page, and AFAICT, the situation hasn't
changed much.
They may represent the heart of the developer, but (s)he is too often
the wrong person to be documenting the beast -- (s)he *knows* it
inside and out, makes too many assumptions, and may or may not be a
capable writer. There's a reason that technical writers exist, and it
isn't because developers are lazy...
