I have found the docs the best place to start with anything, but have found that some don’t know how to write good documentation.

Also man pages and the tools own help -? Or -h

If you run something that has pants docs, you could always see if there is a way to help update it

I had a boring manufacturing job with long gaps between batches of work, so I read every help file in Windows NT4.1. While reading them, I found a way around our IT limitations on which apps we could run, and learned how to write scripts. So I wrote a password protected launcher tool using a macro feature in a terminal emulator I had access to on my workstation, and then started reading the man pages in Unix sys-V.

i stopped reading most docs after like 95 unless they are rfc or reference and i had a memory that was stellar

now, i read all of them over and over and over because i got a tbi from electroshock “therapy” and i am working with shitty autobiographical memories and cant get to the details. so i read, keep reading, and make sure all the mans are at hand along with my references. now i get frustrated and wanna die but i still get it done but im always like yeah uh no

What the … LOL

I find that the docs usually consist of a quick start guide covering some ultra tight scenario that doesn’t apply to most people, and reference material that’s just some total brain dump of every possible command without any kind of context.

If documentation is written in a readable and confluent way, RTFM isn’t such a big deal. The issue comes with overly draconian and non-confluent documentation.

Nothing teaches you what the documentation says like plowing ahead without reading it, fucking something up badly, having to crawl back to the documentation hat in hand and actually read it.

Oh it happens to the best of us. I was working on a simple cron the other day with the cron string that would insert the cron into my cron config something like ‘echo’ and the normal string you’d recognize, and ended with a ‘-’. I wasn’t paying attention and issued the command which did insert itself into the cron config, but in a manner in which I didn’t want. It replaced the whole cron file with that one string. #$@^$$ Luckily I have a cron to back up the crontabs.

I worked next to a technical writer for Unix; the Unix. One of the things we were known for, actually, was the amazing documentation. This guy and both teams of writers (that many) maintained the doc as their entire job. It was written well, it was spell-checked, it was accurate, it was accessible. If you installed the machine, it was on http://localhost/doc or so.

Almost all tech writers were turfed after Y2K. They cost money and didn’t earn directly.

If you notice a lack of good docco like you notice a lack of mentoring in code dev (I see you, Systemd), then we know how we got to this stage.

If you become CEO, just keep that in mind.

I also don’t RTFM

I mostly try to read the docs, but sadly good documentation is pretty rare.

While investing money to create good documentation is the preferred way, I cannot trust it to be accurate in this day and age of cutting corners. It takes a bit longer but I’ll always look at the code itself to get me closest to the truth of what is going on under the hood.

Lol reading the source has trained me to try reading the documentation.

If it’s good, it’ll save hours or crawling through code.

RTFM. …
… The last thing you try.

It’s weird that Linux certification requires rote-memorization of commands. The only people who make any effort to memorize commands are newbies and people studding for exams. You will always have access to bash history, man, and --help, even from an offline machine.

Every command I’ve memorized is simply the natural process of repetition. Is that your experience?