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2013 Resolutions: a man page a day makes the newb go away

sobering.ca

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Re: 2013 Resolutions: a man page a day makes the newb go away

#11

Post by DanBC »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #2

Naturally, this is the time of year to make goals and attempt to change. What a person feels like they need to change and whether that is a "good change" or not is highly personal and probably doesn't require much comment. More interesting is how you go about making that change. What do you do (from types of goals you choose down to the daily implementation) to achieve your goals? I always try to have a meaningful, m…

> The place where I struggle is the day-to-day tasks, and I still haven't found the answer.

One thing that worked for me (but I accept it might not work for everyone) that was given me by an occupational therapist was to break everything down into tiny tasks.

Thus, not "I will wash the dishes", but "I will gather everything that needs washing." then "I will scrape them off" and "I will clean the sink" then "I will put dishes in sink with hot hot water and dish soap" then "I will scrub them and let them drain" then "I will dry them" finally "I will put them away". Each task is small and easily achievable, even if it's a tough day. And doing one small task gives you a small sense of achievement, and gets you moving around. That might be enough for you to continue doing things, or you might decide that's enough for the day. But at least you've stopped things going backwards, and started making progress.

Another thing that helped me was having a rigid structure. Thus, Thursday is always "take the trash out". But don't overload each day with tasks. Just put 2 tasks per day, and make sure you include 1 thing for you each day.

I guess these are more useful when days are tough, rather than just everyday.

Re: 2013 Resolutions: a man page a day makes the newb go away

#12

Post by thinkling »

More than worrying about what to read next, I'd worry about fully understanding how a command is used in practice. It's one thing to read (say) the xargs man page and another thing to have a sense where it'll come in handy. Similarly, some commands have dozens of options, while you only need to understand a few for most of the common uses.

So I'd recommend doing a bit more than reading the man page. The best suggestion I can think of is to also read the top 3-5 questions on StackExchange that mention that command.

PS: after reading the man page for man itself, I recommend 'man apropos'. :)

Re: 2013 Resolutions: a man page a day makes the newb go away

#13

Post by temp453463343 »

While I think it's a neat idea - I think in the end it's gunna be a case of in-one-ear out-the-other.

For instance I read all of "The Unix Programming Environment" by Kernighan and Pike. It's FULL of useful information (in fact I'd argue it's way better than reading man pages) and after I was done I felt like I was 10 times the Linux man I was. However unless you're fighting with Linux a lot on a daily basis you quickly forget 80-90% of what you read. For instance, I found it near impossible to remember what '@' does in bash scripts.

It's quite demoralizing - and I've had the same experience many many times with technical books. You not only have to read, but you also have to DO the things you read (strangely this isn't the case for history books, or books on the soft-sciences). This can be almost impossible for the more obscure (though still very useful) features like the zillions of cool-but-not-so-often-used flags you will come across in your man page reading.

Re: 2013 Resolutions: a man page a day makes the newb go away

#14

Post by rickdale »

I recommend starting with one task and adding to it as the year goes on. Learning the man pages could potentially make you a better programmer without reading K&R. Set K&R aside until February and achieve your first goal. It's important to change one behavior at a time and expect and plan for failure. Shoot for 5-6 days a week with 1 day review, or 3 with 2 days review, and just do what you feel with the extra day. Review or move forward.

Good luck. New Years Resolutions are great, stay motivated.

Re: 2013 Resolutions: a man page a day makes the newb go away

#15

Post by sobering »

thinkling wrote: post #12

More than worrying about what to read next, I'd worry about fully understanding how a command is used in practice. It's one thing to read (say) the xargs man page and another thing to have a sense where it'll come in handy. Similarly, some commands have dozens of options, while you only need to understand a few for most of the common uses. So I'd recommend doing a bit more than reading the man page. The best suggesti…

The StackExchange idea is excellent. I'll get a sense of how the command should be used in real environments.

I'll definitely check out 'apropos'. :)

Re: 2013 Resolutions: a man page a day makes the newb go away

#16

Post by sobering »

rickdale wrote: post #14

I recommend starting with one task and adding to it as the year goes on. Learning the man pages could potentially make you a better programmer without reading K&R. Set K&R aside until February and achieve your first goal. It's important to change one behavior at a time and expect and plan for failure. Shoot for 5-6 days a week with 1 day review, or 3 with 2 days review, and just do what you feel with the extra day. R…

Thanks for the advice. I've already gone through K&R, but I just got the C Answer Book in the mail a couple months back and wanted to go through all the exercises again. I'll just have to really pace myself and not take in more information than I can handle in a single day.

Re: 2013 Resolutions: a man page a day makes the newb go away

#17

Post by sobering »

temp453463343 wrote: post #13

While I think it's a neat idea - I think in the end it's gunna be a case of in-one-ear out-the-other. For instance I read all of "The Unix Programming Environment" by Kernighan and Pike. It's FULL of useful information (in fact I'd argue it's way better than reading man pages) and after I was done I felt like I was 10 times the Linux man I was. However unless you're fighting with Linux a lot on a daily basis you quic…

Agreed. I've had the same demoralizing experience with books and manuals in the past. What I really hope to do after reading each manual page is use it throughout the day wherever I can. Someone else also suggested reading some StackExchange questions on each command. I think that will be beyond valuable, and provide some real world uses that I can add to my toolbelt.

Re: 2013 Resolutions: a man page a day makes the newb go away

#18

Post by sobering »

WinnyDaPoo wrote: post #9

Neat! You should keep track of your man page reading and share your experience! I'm anticipating your homepage growing into a wonderful electronic flower of information.

Hah! 'electronic flower of information'. Awesome.

p.s. I'm from Winnipeg, the city Winnie the Pooh is named after.

Re: 2013 Resolutions: a man page a day makes the newb go away

#19

Post by ciupicri »

sobering wrote: post #10
aleprok wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please share that script when you do it. It might be fancy to read man pages when one is bored instead of watching something as the randomness might dig some cool facts of the system for you which you did not know before hand.

Just found this little snippet via a quick Google search: dir="/bin"; man $(ls $dir |sed -n "$(echo $(( $RANDOM % $(ls $dir |wc -l | awk "{ print $1; }" ) + 1 )) )p") I think I may write my own version as well. Just to gain a bit more experience with shell scripting.

Unfortunately there are a couple of commands that don't have a man page, e.g. mpplu (from argyllcms-1.4.0-2.fc17.x86_64) or showchar (from psutils-1.17-38.fc17.x86_64).
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