Comment by teiferer
14 hours ago
> a gigantic manual that lists every property of the system in excruciating detail, which is totally worthless for learning and barely usable as reference.
It's the only usable form of reference! I want all the details to be presented in a reference. Where else?
> low-level tools are terrible too
It seems to me the author is confusing lack of familiarity with lack of existence. There are lots of fantastic tools out there, you just need to learn them. They don't know them, so conclude they don't exist.
> We could have editor plugins and language servers to help beginners along
We already have all that.
> It's the only usable form of reference! I want all the details to be presented in a reference. Where else?
I guess it's like a dictionary: it's only useful if you know the word you want to look up, rather than reading through every definition until you find the function/library/ability that you want. I do agree though, when I need to look something up, I do want it in great detail - it just isn't a very good learning resource.
> It seems to me the author is confusing lack of familiarity with lack of existence. There are lots of fantastic tools out there, you just need to learn them. They don't know them, so conclude they don't exist.
Can you give some examples? The author made a compelling argument on how easy it is to use the browser debugger. I would be of great interest for something similar.
> We already have all that.
I've only seen these for simple python applications or web development, never in any 'low level' space. And certainly not for doing anything interesting in the low level space (something that is not just a C++ language tutorial).
Language servers with LSP for Rust and C++ are available and, I believe, widely used. At least I use them.
I think the original article wasn't just proposing the existence of language servers, but specifically that they (that do exist) should be used to help beginners to make the process of low level software development approach the level of ease as web development with it's tooling.
I'm not quite sure what they would look like in practise.
As a reference, yes, when you already have the context. But you need a guide. In fact, that's also the function of a doctoral advisor, to help you navigate a subject matter.
> It's the only usable form of reference! I want all the details to be presented in a reference. Where else?
This is one of those "there are N types of people in the world". I'm with you, a detailed reference is the ideal scenario, but there seem to be many people who don't find that useful given their knowledge acquisition style.
Sure. But they explicitly claimed that a detailed reference is not useful as a reference.
Not any reference, though, but a specific style of one: A reference mostly written as a box-ticking exercise, written more for the writer than the reader. I like manpages, but the microcontroller manuals rarely reach those lofty heights.