Right. There are two problems with software generally like this: interface and culture.
Becoming expert at a tool like git involves building familiarity with the concepts involved. While it's not entirely hidden in the --help and manual pages, the descriptions provided there do not consistently use higher levels semantic descriptions of the transformations. You are REQUIRED to look elsewhere to understand or worse -- develop a privately held theory of what's actually happening.
Culturally, a lot of engineers have a basic ethos of "getting things done". Getting the job of the moment done is a "win". There are tons of how do do XYZ articles that are separated from "why" and unmarried from useful additional context.
Like, one should be proud of learning a new tool, but it shouldn't be a personal endeavor to conquer Everest. I think it would do a LOT of good for tools -- especially collaboration tools -- to have completely standard introductions that the community enforced in collaboration. "Oh you don't know XYZ? You probably haven't read the standard introduction."
Comments
Right. There are two problems with software generally like this: interface and culture.
Becoming expert at a tool like git involves building familiarity with the concepts involved. While it's not entirely hidden in the --help and manual pages, the descriptions provided there do not consistently use higher levels semantic descriptions of the transformations. You are REQUIRED to look elsewhere to understand or worse -- develop a privately held theory of what's actually happening.
Culturally, a lot of engineers have a basic ethos of "getting things done". Getting the job of the moment done is a "win". There are tons of how do do XYZ articles that are separated from "why" and unmarried from useful additional context.
Like, one should be proud of learning a new tool, but it shouldn't be a personal endeavor to conquer Everest. I think it would do a LOT of good for tools -- especially collaboration tools -- to have completely standard introductions that the community enforced in collaboration. "Oh you don't know XYZ? You probably haven't read the standard introduction."