Marc Rochkind used to advise reading the entire UNIX manual cover to cover each year. The manual was short enough that it could be done in a day or two. It was a great way to discover commands and system calls you didn't use every day, and deepen your understanding of the ones you did use every day. We were in a center that ran PWB UNIX, and the manual was overseen by Ted Dolotta, who was a stickler for good writing. I can't imagine trying to do something similar now. -- jpl On Fri, May 10, 2024 at 7:23 PM Nevin Liber wrote: > On Fri, May 10, 2024 at 11:37 AM Clem Cole wrote: > >> The key is that not all "bloat" is the same (really)—or maybe one >> person's bloat is another person's preference. >> > > A lot of "bloat" comes because our systems really aren't focused on > "discoverability". > > While I probably have used "pr" in the past, I've totally forgotten, the > name "pr" doesn't really help me understand what it is for, and it's just > one of 982 files in my /usr/bin directory alone. How does one discover it? > > It's like using "sed" instead of "head": sure, if you already know "sed", > you don't need "head", but for English speaking folks who know "tail" is > there, it would be (and was in the old days) surprising and frustrating not > to have "head". > > If I have a command and I want it to do something slightly different, the > first place I look is to see if there is a command line option for that. I > know how to discover that (either --help or the man pages). > > GUIs were better at discoverability. The menu at the top made it easy to > see (and constantly reinforced) what was possible, at least until we got > into the era of contextual menus, gestures and force presses. > > They aren't perfect. I get plenty of dialog boxes which have a check box > for "Do not show this message again" which I don't dare check, because I > don't know how to bring up whatever choice it wants me to decide on should > I need to change it in the future. > > > And once you have users/customers, it's hard to get rid of things, because > they value stability. > -- > Nevin ":-)" Liber iber@gmail.com> > +1-847-691-1404 >