In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Twisted <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[ snip ] > I'm wondering if getting your head around unix arcana is also > dependent on an iffy "knack" where you "get it" and somehow know where > to look for documentation and problem fixes, despite everything having > its own idiosyncratic way, and "get" some sort of workflow trick > going, or you don't. Well .... For me I think the crucial thing was having Unix experts on tap when I was learning -- someone to answer my questions patiently, and also to show me things I might not have found on my own. Some combination of Usenet groups and books might have served the same purpose. I find Windows and its tools as frustrating as you seem to find Unix, but I strongly suspect that being shown the ropes by someone who understands and likes the system would help a lot. <shrug> > Personally, the thing I always found most > irritating was the necessary frequent trips to the help. Even when the > help was easy to use (itself rare) that's a load of additional task > switching and crap. Of course, lots of the time the help was not easy > to use. Man pages and anything else viewed on a console, for example > -- generally you could not view it side by side with your work, but > instead interrupt the work, view it, try to memorize the one next > step, go back to your work, perform that next step, back to the help > to memorize another step ... that has all the workflow of a backed-up > sewer, yet until and unless the commands become second nature it's > what you're typically forced to do without a proper GUI. [ I'm trying to imagine circumstances in which I would say "proper GUI" and .... not succeeding. "Proper command line", now that I say sometimes .... :-)? ] About not being able to view help side by side with one's work, though .... You probably haven't heard the joke about how a window manager is a mechanism for having multiple xterms (terminal windows) on the screen at the same time, and a mouse is a device for selecting which one should have the focus? Well, I like it. [ snip ] > Maybe the thing I really, REALLY deplore is simply having 99% of my > attention forced to deal with the mechanics of the job and the > mechanics of the help viewer and only 1% with the actual content of > the job, instead of the other way around. Exactly my experience of trying to use MS Office tools to do quick edits under time pressure. -- B. L. Massingill ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
