Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 13:00:37 -0400 (EDT) From: "James C. Durham" <durham@sludge.pgh.pa.us> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: adopt a newbie program - Thanks Message-ID: <199908281700.NAA00993@sludge.pgh.pa.us>
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young@richardson.apana.org.au wrote: >I agree in principle, but not in practice .... the experts regard so much >stuff that causes >newbies untold grief as too trivial to even mention. I'm not suggesting it >any way that its intentional, but there are countless things that an >experienced unix user takes for granted assuming EVERONE knows basic stuff >as well as they (the experts) do. I was *hoping* someone would mention this. I come at this from the angle of not being a "computer professional". Although I have a CS degree, I don't work in the industry, but have been playing with Unix since the mid-80's after beginning with CP/M in the 70's. I do some consulting and C programming, but I don't get to hear all the latest stuff "around the shop" or "around the lab". A lot of times, documentation which becomes perfectly clear, when one finally understands what the documentor was alluding to but no saying, can be *very* frustrating for me... and I don't think I'm totally uneducated, just not a part of the "leading edge". I am finally seeing some examples in man pages. This was unofficially "verboten" for some reason in the old days. Yes, it's a great feeling to "figure it out for yourself", but a lot of newbies are probablly folk who don't have the time and don't work in the industry, even though they may have all the grit and determination. I think a little unbending of the man page rituals man be in order. Examples are great! Once you grasp the basic idea, you can use the rest of the page to figure out how to improve the system or add features or options. Simply adding a typical useage example to the bottom of the page would work wonders for some people, I think. There are a lot of things that gurus "just know". I work at a place with a lot of technical folk who can understand complicted systems, but don't work with computers. Several have gotten interested in Unix, since I run FreeBSD at my workstation. I sure get some blank looks when, after telling them about how most things work such as "ls" or "cp" and then they come across "dd"! I think a lot of us suffer from the attitude that "When I was new, I had to learn it the hard way". That's human nature. If you're in the business full-time, that's probably best, but if FreeBSD is going to grow, we have to make the learning curve a little shallower at the bottom end. -(climbing off soapbox) Jim Durham To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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