I had a problem with sendmail about 20 years ago, for several days I tried ro fix it, the only way I fixed it was reading the manual, not the whole manual because about half I read what was i doing wrong.
If everything else fails, read the manual
Hahaha. Most here making excuses why they don’t read manuals.
Actually, several hours of cursing and trying are an excellent substitute for up to three minutes of manpage reading.
Have you seen the manuals today? 90% of the content for a product manual is CYA. In the next year or so they will all be written by AI.
Also, different people have different learning styles. A manual is just one. Many of us learn better by having something real to do, and learning by doing.
Yeah, but where is the manual to read the fucking manual ?
Manuel had it last.
you talking about school?
Yeah, that shit that bore you to death. Who needs it anyway? Ignorance is strength.
right?
/s
Einstein reportedly said “Never memorize something you can look up in a book”. When asked the speed of sound he said , “I do not know but that number is commonly found in textbooks”.
I am not going to spend my life reading manuals. Reading my furnace manual years before a problem arises is unlikely to help me.
However, I completely agree that RTFM is a great thing to do with confronted with a gap in knowledge or problem to be solved. Not the whole manual probably, just the relevant parts.
I think it is much more important to store ideas in your head than information. That said, those ideas do not come from nothing.
I might not read the man pages of every command on a Linux system. At least, not all of them. But I should know high-level what commands are available and what they generally do. That allows me to think of them when they would be useful. But I probably have no idea what the proper syntax is for any of them when I go to use them.
And “the manual” is not always the best place to get ideas, even if it is the authoritative source for specific knowledge.
Time spent reading the manual is time not spent doing something else. Spend your time learning. Spend most of it learning what is possible. In my view, that is the best strategy.
I think reading the manual gives you the concept of what something is capable of doing. No one is saying memorize all the commands and their flags.
But if you read all of them, maybe some day you’ll have a problem and realize, wait… I’ve seen something like this before. And you can then look up the specifics.
We may not be disagreeing. I guess it depends what you mean by read.
Yeah very true. I was floundering with an issue recently. I couldn’t find any help until I added “docs” to my search. RTFM.
“Read The Fabulous Manual”
Not to take away how important reading these things are but I hate how people with a functional memory have no idea what life is like for people with poor memory. I would forget everything I read the minute button mashed the keyboard to quit the manual. It’s like when trying to imagine what is like living as one of those people without an inner voice. It’s such a foreign idea that its a shock when you realize some people don’t have one
Bro’s not saying you have to memorize the manual, just like … read it. Even a bit of familiarity goes a long way.
If you have literally no memory then command line is 100% unusable but otherwise every little bit helps.
No memory is me being hyperbolic but it’s severely limited. So I feel like reading a manual line by line means I get much less out of it but it’s a large amount of time invested. So I have to factor in that my retention vs time on task is pretty skewed. It’s frustrating. I need to do something a few times to learn. Learning by reading is not great for me. But tech is a very document heavy industry
Most people don’t memorize things just by reading them. If you chose to construct some simple exercises/examples for yourself to learn by doing, this is very normal and in fact a good idea!
Thanks I’ll give that a try.
So: read the man page, find the switches and options you need and hand write that bitch on a notepad, close the man page and execute the command. It’s tedious but it will help your not-great memory work a lot better.
Or easier, just fire up multiple tty’s. The poor person’s tabs.
What does tty mean in this context?
In this context it is multiple command line instances, like multiple terminals.
I don’t know if you mean you don’t remember the gist even, but it’s more about learning about what’s possible with what so you can look up specifics when you need them than remembering the contents wholesale
This is exactly it. Do I have to read a reference for regex every damn time? Yes. But I also have an idea of what it can do; and knowing that, I have a vague idea when a problem presents itself that I could use regex to solve it.
Edit: Hello Zalgo my old friend.
Unironically my advice to people asking how to get started programming (at a c++ shop) included going through everything on cppreference.com and using every function in a playground at least once.
Isn’t that like telling someone to write every word down? And as such does not really help understand things? It trains how to type the syntax.
If it wasn’t clear, I meant to do something with each function in some test code and understand it… Not just type it in…
When learning a new human language, it’s good practice to also learn sentences and practice speaking and writing, not just rote vocabulary memorization.
How did they know to do “ls /usr/bin” in the first place?
That bit’s just genetic.
"For weeks I typed random letters into the command line, and when I entered
ls /usr/binandmanfinally something happened!How did they know how to get to the command line?
Isn’t that what your computer boots into? Mine sure does!
Your’s booted to a command line? Mine boots to C64 Basic.
Reading the manual of a refrigerator? To know how to open the door or what? Sorry but that is laughable and in no way helps anyone understand anything, manuals are utter trash today. You do need to be curious etc. but advocating reading manuals of such appliances makes me question the whole story, that is how absurd that is.
And set the temperature. And learn how often to clean what parts. And how to take out the shelves and drawers without breaking them. And. And. And.
Does the refrigerator have air or water filters that need to be replaced? How do you do that and how often?
Is there a maintenance schedule for pulling it out and cleaning dust from any heat dissipating elements?
How often should the water hose for the ice maker be checked and replaced?
Is there a trick to removing shelves for cleaning?
How would you even know when to take it in for an oil change??
Does the freezer need to be defrosted at a regular interval? Does it have filters? Does placing items in certain places which block the vent affect performance?
Why is my warranty void?
I got started programming by reading the manual of my TI calculator during a boring history class. It really does work.
You can even learn a new language if you first read the version in a language you know and then do a language you don’t know yet.
This goes against what we know about good design. Where possible you shouldn’t need to use a manual. Telling people to always read the manual is a cop out.
Also he apparently read his furnace’s manual and months/years later remembered what a flashing light meant, despite never having had to refer to it again? Either this guy has freakishly good memory (possible but unlikely) or he’s bullshitting. Given the overall tone I’d go with the latter.
And what is even the advantage of knowing in advance? Does he think people would not read the manual after seeing a flashing error light? You can look up most issues when they happen you don’t have to memorise error codes in advance.
This is just a dumb “I’m so great” post.
I agree with you, but reading beforehand has the advantage of knowing what to look out for to keep your device from getting to the “flashing light” stage.
