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Re: obnoxious CLI complaints

From
Dmitry Potapov <dpotapov@gmail.com>
Date
Sep 12, 2009, 10:31 UTC
Message-ID
<20090912103156.GA30385@dpotapov.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To
<ef38762f0909091709t7336d86dkd2f175e5b3a6a3f@mail.gmail.com>
On Wed, Sep 09, 2009 at 05:09:31PM -0700, Brendan Miller wrote:
Show 10 quoted lines
> On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 2:54 PM, Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Brendan Miller <catphive@catphive.net> writes:
> >>
> >> This is what I want to do 90% of the time, so it should just have the
> >> proper defaults, and not make me look at the man page every time I
> >> want to use it.
> >
> > You learn those idioms.
> 
> I guess. Is that a good thing?
In general, yes, because most of them exist for a good reason.
> Is the goal of interface design to make
> it difficult so I need to learn a lot of things, or easy so I can
> remain blissfully ignorant but still do what I want?

Neither. You cannot get what unless you have specified what you want, and for that you have to learn how to say that. Having good defaults is very important, but the problem with choosing them is that people have different preferences about them. For instance, you wanted the default prefix for git-archive to be $myproject. For me, a good default would be either $tag_name, or $myproject-$tag_name, or empty (as it is now!). So, what you propose is *never* a good default for me. Moreover, changing any default will cause a lot of pain for other people who use Git now. Besides, writing something like --prefix='' is very ugly. So, the current default makes perfect sense.

Show 11 quoted lines
> >>
> >> 7. Man pages: It's nice we have them, but we shouldn't need them to do
> >> basic stuff. I rarely had to look at the man pages using svn, but
> >> every single time I use git I have to dig into these things. Frankly,
> >> I have better things to do than RTFM.
> >
> > Learn.  If you learn the philosophy behind git design, you would have
> > much easier understanding and remembering git.
> 
> I think what you mean by philosophy is the underlying data structures,
> which are discussed in the manual

I think I have read them a lot, but I do not remember any underlying data structures described in them. What are you reading?

Show 6 quoted lines
> If I use GCC, do I need to know that it has a recursive descent
> parser? That it is implemented with a garbage collector? No. I just
> need to know that I give it C, and it gives me a binary.
> 
> Example:
> gcc main.c

The fallacy in your logic is that you compare two completely different things thinking about them as almost identical. In case of GCC, the file contains a program written in the C language. If you do not learn the C language, you will not be able to use GCC. On the other hand, for Git any file is just bytes, but the command-line interface describes what you want to do with them. There is no single action that would make sense in all cases, you have to specify what you want. Even with simple tools like sed or awk, you have to learn something before you can use them.

Show 7 quoted lines
> >
> > There is "Git User's Manual", "The Git Community Book", "Pro Git" and
> > many other references.
> 
> Yeah, I've been reading them. I'm saying that the docs are a crutch.
> RTFM is the problem not the solution. It makes the user do more work
> to avoid fixing usability issues.

A usability issue exists when a person knows how to do that, but it is inconvenient or error-prone; or when a learning curve is too steep. But when someone cannot use, let's say, a compiler, because he or she refuses to read to learn the language, it is not a usability issue.

Dmitry
Previous: Linus TorvaldsNext: John Tapsell
Message 26 of 46 in “obnoxious CLI complaints”
  1. Brendan MillerSep 9, 2009
  2. Jakub NarebskiSep 9, 2009
  3. Wincent ColaiutaSep 9, 2009
  4. Jakub NarebskiSep 10, 2009
  5. Junio C HamanoSep 10, 2009
  6. René ScharfeSep 10, 2009
  7. Björn SteinbrinkSep 11, 2009
  8. John TapsellSep 10, 2009
  9. Sverre RabbelierSep 10, 2009
  10. Jakub NarebskiSep 10, 2009
  11. John TapsellSep 10, 2009
  12. Junio C HamanoSep 10, 2009
  13. demerphqSep 10, 2009
  14. Junio C HamanoSep 11, 2009
  15. John TapsellSep 11, 2009
  16. Junio C HamanoSep 11, 2009
  17. Brendan MillerSep 10, 2009
  18. Todd ZullingerSep 10, 2009
  19. Jakub NarebskiSep 10, 2009
  20. Eric SchaeferSep 10, 2009
  21. Sverre RabbelierSep 10, 2009
  22. René ScharfeSep 10, 2009
  23. Linus TorvaldsSep 11, 2009
  24. René ScharfeSep 11, 2009
  25. Linus TorvaldsSep 11, 2009
  26. Dmitry PotapovSep 12, 2009
  27. John TapsellSep 12, 2009
  28. Dmitry PotapovSep 12, 2009
  29. John TapsellSep 12, 2009
  30. A Large Angry SCMSep 12, 2009
  31. Dmitry PotapovSep 12, 2009
  32. John TapsellSep 12, 2009
  33. Junio C HamanoSep 13, 2009
  34. 1/2 git-archive: add '-o' as a alias for '--output'Dmitry Potapov, Sep 13, 2009
  35. 2/2 teach git-archive to auto detect the output formatDmitry Potapov, Sep 13, 2009
  36. Junio C HamanoSep 13, 2009
  37. 2/2 teach git-archive to auto detect the output formatDmitry Potapov, Sep 13, 2009
  38. Junio C HamanoSep 13, 2009
  39. Junio C HamanoSep 13, 2009
  40. 1/2 git-archive: add '-o' as a alias for '--output'Dmitry Potapov, Sep 13, 2009
  41. Brendan MillerSep 17, 2009
  42. Junio C HamanoSep 17, 2009
  43. Sverre RabbelierSep 9, 2009
  44. Pierre HabouzitSep 9, 2009
  45. Björn SteinbrinkSep 10, 2009
  46. Matthieu MoySep 10, 2009

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