Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2022 10:45:59 -0400
From: Jan Schaumann <jscha...@netmeister.org>
Message-ID: <20220815144559.go11...@netmeister.org>
| I think it's short-sighted and unfair to equate lack
| of experience with idiocy.
Then why did you jump to that conclusion? That is neither
what I said, nor what I meant.
There is no problem with inexperienced users, who are capable
enough to know they are inexperienced (which of itself says
very little) and who are willing to learn, and to recognise
that learning means work.
The best way for such users to become experienced, is by doing
things, and that should start with the small things, of course,
for which solutions can fairly easily be discovered.
So, for example if the shell were to not start with line editing
enabled (to borrow from one of the recent issues) a moron user
with complain about how useless it is, and moan a lot, and that's
about it. A user who is merely inexperienced will wonder why
that is, and perhaps decide to have a look in the documentation for
the shell, which will tell them that "set -E" (or set -o emacs) or
set -V (or set -o vi) will enable it. Then they'd try that, and
discover that it does work. Next would be how to make that happen
automatically, so back to the man page to learn about the startup
scripts that the shell runs.
After this the user is a bit more experienced than they were, they
feel they have accomplished something (and they have) and while looking
for the answers to the immediate question, probably also came across
other information they weren't aware of - they won't necessarily understand
all of that, because of not having an immediate need, or reason to test it
- but they will remember that they saw something about whatever when they
do need that information.
In this "man page" can be replaced by web searches, or various other
mechanisms (including NetBSD intro documentation - some areas of
which we probably need more of, but lack people willing to write it),
| > In all of this we need to resist the temptation to argue for what works
| > best for ourselves
|
| ...yet that appears to your basis of argument.
Not at all - I could easily contribute my environmemt, in which lots of
things "just work", but a user experiencing that would never have the
motivation to find out how any of it works, or what can be altered to
suit their own tastes.
There's a proverb something about giving a fish vs teaching fishing that
is probably relevant here.
kre
