It works at three levels:
1. Selfish... It's fine for people to play the game at level one, because they are also helping others learn and work their way up the skill ladder
Wow - that is a really cool observation. Atwood just went way up in my estimation for expressing this.
This fights against the "Go read the 2000 page manual, you idiot!"-itis found on specialist sites.
A reference manual is a terrible learning tool. It is only useful if you know what you are looking for. For that matter, it is difficult to use if you don't know the correct words to search for, as he mentions elsewhere when discussing duplicate questions.
Programmers who get off on saying RTFM are useless and should not be allowed anywhere near such discussions. If you were sitting next to the guy, you would
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday November 30, 2015 @04:45PM (#51029267)
Actually, You misunderstand the RTFM. You should read it. Not when You have a problem -- read it, optimally before You use it. How else would You know the capabilities and limitations of the tool that You are using? It works for real world tools as well -- You should read the manual before plugging the tool in.
Recalling a hint from xkcd about sudoers(5) [www.sudo.ws]: the description of the sudoers file format starts with a "Quick guide to EBNF" and the whole manual is roughly 13,000 words long. When you want to change the password prompt timeout today, RTwholeFM before opening visudo is not an option.
Perhaps what #51029267 meant is that you ought to have read through sudo(8) and sudoers(5) not just before you visudo but even before you sudo in the first place.
As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there
is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
Three cheers for selfishness! (Score:2, Interesting)
It works at three levels: 1. Selfish ... It's fine for people to play the game at level one, because they are also helping others learn and work their way up the skill ladder
Wow - that is a really cool observation. Atwood just went way up in my estimation for expressing this.
Re: (Score:2)
This fights against the "Go read the 2000 page manual, you idiot!"-itis found on specialist sites.
A reference manual is a terrible learning tool. It is only useful if you know what you are looking for. For that matter, it is difficult to use if you don't know the correct words to search for, as he mentions elsewhere when discussing duplicate questions.
Programmers who get off on saying RTFM are useless and should not be allowed anywhere near such discussions. If you were sitting next to the guy, you would
Re:Three cheers for selfishness! (Score:0)
Actually, You misunderstand the RTFM.
You should read it. Not when You have a problem -- read it, optimally before You use it. How else would You know the capabilities and limitations of the tool that You are using? It works for real world tools as well -- You should read the manual before plugging the tool in.
Re: (Score:1)
Recalling a hint from xkcd about sudoers(5) [www.sudo.ws]: the description of the sudoers file format starts with a "Quick guide to EBNF" and the whole manual is roughly 13,000 words long. When you want to change the password prompt timeout today, RTwholeFM before opening visudo is not an option.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps what #51029267 meant is that you ought to have read through sudo(8) and sudoers(5) not just before you visudo but even before you sudo in the first place.