Has anybody ever done a usability study on the Linux CLI interface?
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@blakeyrat said:
That's the problem! You're stagnant! You know how it works now but you can't conceive of how it should work! You should be spending every minute of every day thinking to yourself, "how could this be made better?"
That's the point though, you appear not to know how things work, but you blow a lot of air about how they should work. Somehow I doubt as well that you'll voice these same "concerns" to the people responsible for APT because it's much easier to rant here where we all know you're a bit of a ranty idiot and we can laugh at you. So whilst I priase you for amusement value, I will tell you that you're not doing yourself any favours.
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@caffiend said:
If you follow his posts Blakey isn't stupid, and if you've ever had to make something "idiot proof" i guess you assume that everyone else should too.
Much humor is derived here from watching a post that unfolds thusly:
@Fictitious Post said:
@OP said:
I hate Windows. I can't do X without having to A, B, C! I can't get my work done in this garbage OS!
@blakeyrat said:You worthless piece of ignorant filth! Windows has had feature X as part of Y for 3 versions! Your ignorance proves that you are a bucket of warm spit! If computers worked the way you insist they should, we'd all be sitting in caves instead of making funny Pony graphics to share!
...and comparing it to his adventure trying to install something that actually comes with his operating system. And the fact that he's entirely ignorant of several of the fundamental bits of the operating system in question.
@caffiend said:
Although I feel your pain, i kinda wish you had have tried to use the standard server installation of Debian. I might be wrong, but from memory i don't think it has sudo installed by default. so "sudo apt-get install blah" results in "command not found". and "apt-get instal sudo" results in "permission denied." The rant would have been so much better.
+1
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@blakeyrat said:
So he took 30 minutes to do a task that has to be done once a... what? Year? 5 years? 15 years? And that is the example that demonstrates its productivity? "I saved 19 minutes, which averages out to 1.5 minutes per year." Seriously? This is what you open with?
It was an example you fool, not his only example. If he was just doing that for a few things in a month he might save himself a couple of hours. Say what you want, but I don't like having to stay hours after work unpaid to get stuff done. The old adage is to work smarter not harder. but hey, you go on and work hard. You're just slowly becoming one of those people desperately trying to create work for yourself so as not to become redundant.
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@blakeyrat said:
I don't recall giving you permission to download them and YouTube sure as fuck didn't.
How do you think people watch videos on YouTube? The bits have to go somewhere, and that is called downloading. Perhaps you meant to say you didn't give him permission to permanently store them? Well, you know the only sure-fire method to prevent that? Don't put them on YouTube, simple.
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@blakeyrat said:
I never asked for your help. And my bitching has nothing to do with me not knowing what I'm doing.
Actually, your bitching has a lot to do with you're not knowing what you're doing, it's just that you've yet to realise it yet.@blakeyrat said:
BTW, this has happened multiple times in this forum, where people are all like, "hey you asked for my help and now you're a jerk for not taking it!" when it turns out I'd never asked for anybody's help in the first goddamned place. I clearly remember the same thing happened in the thread where I was talking about browsers killing connections during BeforeUnload handlers. Why does this happen? What's wrong with people here? God it's infuriating.
What you're failing to see here is that people in general aren't arseholes, and will help out a fellow human being they see floundering around in need of help. The crazy thing is, you've recognised the trend for people here offering help after you rant about some problem you've had (mostly because what you're ranting about isn't considered a WTF by most people here and you often leave out information which you slowly reveal in dribs and drabs later in the thread) yet you still rant in the same way. You sir, are the WTF here.
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@caffiend said:
i figgure the root cause of blakey's anger is that he's had to make an installer
That is not what the problem is at all.
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@Xyro said:
Wtf, where did this thread come from? [...] Anyone wish to summarize?
blakeyrat tried to use Linux again.
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@ASheridan said:
The worst part is (and I think it's deliberate on his part) I never offered to help. I was just saying that if he had wanted to ask for help, he could have. But I understood completely in his original rant that he was not asking for help.@blakeyrat said:
BTW, this has happened multiple times in this forum, where people are all like, "hey you asked for my help and now you're a jerk for not taking it!" when it turns out I'd never asked for anybody's help in the first goddamned place. I clearly remember the same thing happened in the thread where I was talking about browsers killing connections during BeforeUnload handlers. Why does this happen? What's wrong with people here? God it's infuriating.
What you're failing to see here is that people in general aren't arseholes, and will help out a fellow human being they see floundering around in need of help. The crazy thing is, you've recognised the trend for people here offering help after you rant about some problem you've had (mostly because what you're ranting about isn't considered a WTF by most people here and you often leave out information which you slowly reveal in dribs and drabs later in the thread) yet you still rant in the same way. You sir, are the WTF here.
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@ASheridan said:
@blakeyrat said:
@nonpartisan said:
The point is scope. You said you were a "system administrator". If all you ever did was to restart a service when it had problems, you were not a server administrator.
completely irrelevant "no true scotsman" bullshit
What he said is pretty much on the ball though. If all you did was restart a service every now and again, that hardly quialifies as a system administrator.
What blakeyrat actually said was that he was running a SMAUG-based MUD for seven years. So that isn't seven years of experience as a sysadmin; that isn't even one year of experience repeated seven times over. That's more like -7 years experience.
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@nonpartisan said:
But I understood completely in his original rant that he was not asking for help.
But in that - and successive ones - he asked questions but still chewed some people out for providing answers (and in my case, moved goalposts a few times).
Perhaps we're TRWTF for not understand that his rants only contain rhetorical questions, and must resist the urge to provide information in future.
Either way... I'm gonna draw a line under it for now. I've upset him (over the permissions/downloading thing), I've apologised, he's flounced out of this thread, there's nothing to be gained by flogging a dead horse.
We've all seen the behaviour before: let's not descend into cackling old witches endlessly debating it. It's over.
... until the next time.
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@nonpartisan said:
Oooh! I know this one! Is it so that he'd have something to bitch about?@blakeyrat said:
. . . simply put: installing MongoDB on Ubuntu Linux when I don't know how to use the system tools is too hard
and it shouldn't be.You still haven't said why you're having to install it under a Linux-based system when you have it working on Windows. Why did you even put yourself in this position in the first place?
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@boomzilla said:
@Soviut said:
It also bears mention that there are several helpful CLI tutorials available online, which doesn't count as discoverability, but answers the original question of how to find out about tail and grep.
And when I'm presented with a default prompt on the bash CLI I'm supposed to know this how? This is the whole issue of discoverability, there is none.False! There are generally two ways to have discoverability on the CLI. Firstly, you check out the man page. Some are better than others. But everything installed on your system should have one by convention.
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@Kittemon said:
What blakeyrat actually said was that he was running a SMAUG-based MUD for seven years. So that isn't seven years of experience as a sysadmin; that isn't even one year of experience repeated seven times over. That's more like -7 years experience.
I spent years playing games like Baldurs Gate, and Diablo. I guess as I had to start the program each time I wanted to play (essentially restarting the service), that makes me a system administrator, sweet!
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@ASheridan said:
that makes me a system administrator, sweet!
In the days of NT4, Microsoft conflated "Windows Support" and "Network Administration" in their error messages.
And thus many Windows Sysadmins were wrongly calling themselves "Network Administrators" but had no idea of network protocols, routing, gateways, sockets, etc.
"Can I speak to your Netadmin?"
"I am the netadmin!"
"How long are your DHCP leases?"
"my wha? Where do I find that? Is that in Control Panel?"
Fun discussions all around.
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@Cassidy said:
@ASheridan said:
that makes me a system administrator, sweet!
In the days of NT4, Microsoft conflated "Windows Support" and "Network Administration" in their error messages.
And thus many Windows Sysadmins were wrongly calling themselves "Network Administrators" but had no idea of network protocols, routing, gateways, sockets, etc.
"Can I speak to your Netadmin?"
"I am the netadmin!"
"How long are your DHCP leases?"
"my wha? Where do I find that? Is that in Control Panel?"
Fun discussions all around.
Reminds me of a time when I was in a previous job and asked one of the server guys to set up a basic Linux VM with a LAMP stack on, just the default SuSE setup and I'd tweak and configure the rest. What I got was a VM with no web server, no database, restricted access to the Yast repositories (restricted as in completely blocked) and virtually no source header files to compile stuff from myself. I wouldn't mind, but he specifically double checked with me, in writing, about my exact requirements. Mind you, it was the same guy that thought thata Windows DLL could be used on Linux with no problems whatsoever.
His exact job? He was meant to manage the computers in the building, which included Linux web servers and Linux Smoke/Flame systems for video editing.
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@Cassidy said:
But in that - and successive ones - he asked questions but still chewed some people out for providing answers (and in my case, moved goalposts a few times).
Perhaps we're TRWTF for not understand that his rants only contain rhetorical questions, and must resist the urge to provide information in future.
He's not the best troll on the DailyWTF forums. As this thread demonstrates, he gets a reaction, but he loses points for the number of follow-up posts.
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@pjt33 said:
He's not the best troll on the DailyWTF forums.
I don't really think he is trolling. It seems as though he's more interested in shouting questions but ignoring answers (or moving goalposts) which indicates more volatile behaviour, and almost winds himself up as a result.
@pjt33 said:
As this thread demonstrates, he gets a reaction, but he loses points for the number of follow-up posts.
yeah... to me, trolling behaviour is usually the other way around - a few well-reasoned (but apparently stupid) posts that provoke a strong emotional reaction in a baying mob, rather than some seething posts that elicit some calm responses.
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This thread has made me sad and bored so I substituted CLI with clit and had a few laughs. The state of the IT industry reminds me of this:
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@blakeyrat said:
@superjer said:
If your sudo didn't ask for authentication, it's just configured that way, and it isn't normal.
That's how the most popular Linux distribution configured it by default, I think that pretty much defines "normal" in the Linux world.
That is simply not true. First time you use sudo on a cli it will ask for your password. Then it will remember it for a couple minutes. If you open another cli and try sudo, you will get asked for your password again.
And Ubuntu DOES NOT define normal. By default, the first user you create is allowed to sudo everything, which is not secure. Ubuntu is trying to be easy for everyone, so they trade some security for ease-of-use.
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@TimeBandit said:
First time you use sudo on a cli it will ask for your password.
Not necessarily. By default, yes it does, but if a particular distribution has NOPASSWD in the relevant place in sudoers, then it won't. At all. Ever. (At least for the users it applies to.)
While you're busy ignoring the man page for sudoers, you may also want to not read about exempt_group as well.
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Is it possible Blakeyrat is logged in as a user with a blank password? IIRC, it won't ask you if there is no password. Note that sudo uses your password not root's password.
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@joe.edwards said:
Is it possible Blakeyrat is logged in as a user with a blank password?
Unless someone (within the distro maintainers) has been messing with <file they shouldn't be>, no. If sudo requires a password, it requires a non-blank password.
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@Cassidy said:
there's nothing to be gained by flogging a dead horse.
...not even a hard-on? (necrobestiality is more common than people think)
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@Speakerphone Dude said:
...not even a hard-on? (necrobestiality is more common than people think)
sadomasopedorobonecrobestiality
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@dhromed said:
@Speakerphone Dude said:
...not even a hard-on? (necrobestiality is more common than people think)
sadomasopedorobonecrobestiality
How does that work exactly? Getting off by torturing a robotic pup that has no battery?
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This happens all the time in linux and reminds me why i keeping putting it down and doing something else.
Seems to be a rule with linux and OSS projects to keep v1 of the documentation online ven though v2 and v3 have been available for 4 years and have sustantial cli and achitecture changes from v1. Additionally the best bit is when options are removed or moved from config files, however the config file itself still exists... combinedwith the old v1 docs drives me nuts.
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@Helix said:
This happens all the time in linux and reminds me why i keeping putting it down and doing something else.
Seems to be a rule with linux and OSS projects to keep v1 of the
documentation online ven though v2 and v3 have been available for 4
years and have sustantial cli and achitecture changes from v1.
Additionally the best bit is when options are removed or moved from
config files, however the config file itself still exists...
combinedwith the old v1 docs drives me nuts.
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@nonpartisan said:
@Helix said:
This happens all the time in linux and reminds me
why i keeping putting it down and doing something else.Seems to be a rule with linux and OSS projects to keep v1 of the
documentation online ven though v2 and v3 have been available for 4
years and have sustantial cli and achitecture changes from v1.
Additionally the best bit is when options are removed or moved from
config files, however the config file itself still exists...
combinedwith the old v1 docs drives me nuts.I'd prefer "Beat whores to dead" but I guess this one works too
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@Speakerphone Dude said:
How does that work exactly? Getting off by torturing a robotic pup that has no battery?
You're closer than you think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa7O8juc44k
Bonus video:
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@nonpartisan said:
The copyright says 1990, but the date template is for 20xx. Explain this discrepancy.
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@dhromed said:
@Xyro said:
Explain this discrepancy.
It's because the numbers are different.
But they shouldn't be different. I don't want them to be different.
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I'm just explaining why it's a discrepancy.
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@Helix said:
This happens all the time in linux and reminds me why i keeping putting it down and doing something else.
That would be chapter 3 of the UNIX-HATERS Handbook (Documentation?), except for the config files, which don't have their own chapter because they are complained about throughout the book.Seems to be a rule with linux and OSS projects to keep v1 of the documentation online ven though v2 and v3 have been available for 4 years and have sustantial cli and achitecture changes from v1. Additionally the best bit is when options are removed or moved from config files, however the config file itself still exists... combinedwith the old v1 docs drives me nuts.
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@PedanticCurmudgeon said:
@Helix said:
This happens all the time in linux and reminds me why i keeping putting it down and doing something else.
That would be chapter 3 of the UNIX-HATERS Handbook (Documentation?), except for the config files, which don't have their own chapter because they are complained about throughout the book.Seems to be a rule with linux and OSS projects to keep v1 of the documentation online ven though v2 and v3 have been available for 4 years and have sustantial cli and achitecture changes from v1. Additionally the best bit is when options are removed or moved from config files, however the config file itself still exists... combinedwith the old v1 docs drives me nuts.
Developers just don't like writing documentation. I've never known a developer to like writing documentation.
Now, when you're being paid to do a job, if documenation writing is part of that job, then you don't have a lot of choice. If you're working on something for free, then you're unlikely to be doing stuff you don't like doing.
It's not, as Blakeyrant suggests, that open source developers are any worse than non-open source developers (and they're not mutually exclusive states), it's just that if you're working on something for free, you'll trend toward the tasks that you enjoy more than those you really don't.
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@ASheridan said:
Developers just don't like writing documentation. I've never known a developer to like writing documentation.
I haven't, either.
And yet I know a metric fuckton that all complain about the lack of documentation.
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@Cassidy said:
And yet I know a metric fuckton that all complain about the lack of documentation.
There's a nice bit of irony there, brightened my day right up!
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@Cassidy said:
And yet I know a metric fuckton that all complain about the lack of documentation.
The documentation is in the stack traces, right?
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@dhromed said:
@ASheridan said:
Developers just don't like writing documentation
I kind of do.I'm not a huge fan of doc-writing, but I like doing QA which is something most developers can't stand.
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@dhromed said:
@ASheridan said:
Developers just don't like writing documentation
I kind of do.Denounce yourself immediately and report for reeducation.
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@boomzilla said:
@dhromed said:
@ASheridan said:
Developers just don't like writing documentation
I kind of do.Denounce yourself immediately and report for reeducation.
There's some truth in that.
I don't mean "that shows you're not a proper developer", more "developer covers a range of disciplines" and you're probably more into the specs and design, rather than just the building.
Perhaps "Coders just don't like writing docs" is more accurate.
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@Cassidy said:
Perhaps "Coders just don't like writing docs" is more accurate.
That translates to "Codemonkeys are stupid, narrow-minded fuckwits who willfully deny the bigger picture even though it is all around them slapping them in the face on a near-constant basis."
I'm glad I'm not one of those people.
And that's why offshoring sucks.
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@dhromed said:
That translates to "Codemonkeys are stupid, narrow-minded fuckwits who willfully deny the bigger picture even though it is all around them slapping them in the face on a near-constant basis."
Now, I didn't SAY that.
I was thinking it, mind. And - in my experience - that has proven to be true on many occasions.
BUT I NEVER SAID THAT.
@dhromed said:
I'm glad I'm not one of those people.
We really need some website that contains code excerpts from those people so we could laugh at them and learn by their mistakes. That'd be beneficial.
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@ASheridan said:
Developers just don't like writing documentation. I've never known a developer to like writing documentation.
Now, when you're being paid to do a job, if documenation writing is part of that job, then you don't have a lot of choice. If you're working on something for free, then you're unlikely to be doing stuff you don't like doing.
It's not, as Blakeyrant suggests, that open source developers are any worse than non-open source developers (and they're not mutually exclusive states), it's just that if you're working on something for free, you'll trend toward the tasks that you enjoy more than those you really don't.
Sorry, but idiots don't write documentation. It doesn't matter if you do it for free or not, if you don't write documentation without being asked, you're one of those mediocre idiots I do everything to avoid working with.
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@arh said:
@ASheridan said:
Developers just don't like writing documentation. I've never known a developer to like writing documentation.
Now, when you're being paid to do a job, if documenation writing is part of that job, then you don't have a lot of choice. If you're working on something for free, then you're unlikely to be doing stuff you don't like doing.
It's not, as Blakeyrant suggests, that open source developers are any worse than non-open source developers (and they're not mutually exclusive states), it's just that if you're working on something for free, you'll trend toward the tasks that you enjoy more than those you really don't.
Sorry, but idiots don't write documentation. It doesn't matter if you do it for free or not, if you don't write documentation without being asked, you're one of those mediocre idiots I do everything to avoid working with.
Yes, this.
So OSS projects with low amounts of documentation is written by the underclass of software - essentially the garbage mans project
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@arh said:
@ASheridan said:
Developers just don't like writing documentation. I've never known a developer to like writing documentation.
Now, when you're being paid to do a job, if documenation writing is part of that job, then you don't have a lot of choice. If you're working on something for free, then you're unlikely to be doing stuff you don't like doing.
It's not, as Blakeyrant suggests, that open source developers are any worse than non-open source developers (and they're not mutually exclusive states), it's just that if you're working on something for free, you'll trend toward the tasks that you enjoy more than those you really don't.
Sorry, but idiots don't write documentation. It doesn't matter if you do it for free or not, if you don't write documentation without being asked, you're one of those mediocre idiots I do everything to avoid working with.
Are you suggesting that you actually want the idiots to be writing documentation? Because I don't think that will actually produce a more useful result.
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// functon that will mak thing func MakThing(a, b, c, d, e, h, i, j int) *Thing { // todo }
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@arh said:
Sorry, but idiots don't write documentation. It doesn't matter if you do it for free or not, if you don't write documentation without being asked, you're one of those mediocre idiots I do everything to avoid working with.
I think that's a broad generalisation there.
Firstly, let's establish that documentation isn't required for functioning code - it's required for maintainable code (technical documentation, comments) and for usable products (user manuals, operating manuals, FAQs etc) but many products these days exhibit a high level of discoverable functionality and it's perfectly acceptable for people to work it out by themselves without consulting any guides whatsoever.
One extreme end of the scale are products should be intuitive, provide meaningful feedback to guide the user through the process and suggest alternatives at decision points to visually enumerate different workpaths. The user hardly need consult any manual to get it working, and quickly reaches a level of familiarity that they're comfortable with. This is Blakeyworld.
The other end of the scale are products that lack all the visual clues to guide you through, which applies to many CLI tools but also to some hobbyist hardware (arduino, pi, etc). Creators of these products have eschewed discover-ability and self-describing facets, segregating that into separate documentation - whether it be a printed manual, man page or website where levels of documentation can be arranged to suit specific product stakeholders (FAQs, guides, forums, HowTos).
Historically, the developer mentality was one of the latter: there would be a technical author tasked with writing readable prose whilst the coder could arrange terse machine-readable words in a specific order so the hardware would do their bidding. The coder made it happen, the tech author just wrote a story about how it happened, how to make it happen again and what to do if it didn't happen. All that work was beneath the coder.
In recent times, we've had smaller-scale shops where the developer is not just a coder, but expected to be a designer also. I've experienced many customer sites where their "application developers" are responsible for requirements gathering, formalising specifications, analysis and design as well as the coding. And when it doesn't work, they were responsible for QA of their own product. And when it's taking too long, they're the project manager that gets blamed. They're never given any formal training in any of these other disciplines, and have very few people that feed information into their processes - any info tends to be communicated verbally or via email, so there's little written documentation to begin with - no incentive for a developer to begin creating more.
I agree that documentation should be done, but I'm not sure that a coder who doesn't do it is an idiot - especially when the task has fallen to them solely because nobody else has picked it up.
Having said that,this week I've been working with a consultant that's been documenting a system written entirely by a technical head. She said the tech-head's documented nothing and has all the information in his head, and isn't good at explaining it verbally for her to capture. Yeah, he IS an idiot.
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@Cassidy said:
Creators of these products have eschewed discover-ability and self-describing facets, segregating that into separate documentation - whether it be a printed manual, man page or website where levels of documentation can be arranged to suit specific product stakeholders (FAQs, guides, forums, HowTos).
Suckers. Just put up a wiki!
