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A comment on The sad state of sysadmin in the age of containers. Parent comment

Re:The sad state of sysadmin in the age of containers by Anderkent on Wednesday April 22, 2015 @04:43PM (#9423422)
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.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The sad state of sysadmin in the age of containers by needs on Thursday April 23, 2015 @06:33AM (#9425792)
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.

[ Parent | on HN ]