lua-users home
lua-l archive

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]


On Sat, Jan 18, 2020 at 2:37 PM bil til <flyer31@googlemail.com> wrote:

> Which program languages do you mean, if you cite "usually negative experience", do you mean Phyton?

I do not even recall ever trying to use interactive help in Python. With Python I use its HTML documentation, but, to be fair, not a local copy, so my experience in this respect is biased.

My experience is also biased by the fact that I seldom use "programming languages" like Python or Lua interactively. I typically write code in some editor rather than interactively.

Unix/Windows shell would be a prime example that I use interactively, and getting help there always feels awkward and fiddly. Tab completion is useful when whatever you are trying to use is already kind of familiar. A man page or built-in --help content is typically a (tall) wall of text, and it is quite a challenge to pick commands/options/arguments that are needed for the task at hand, given that you have to build up your command line in the very same console/terminal you are using to get help. I frequently end up opening another console/terminal or some scratch pad, and that is already similar yet inferior to having a browser instead of that.

I am old enough to have worked with systems where having another terminal was difficult or just impossible, because your terminal was a heavy CRT box capable of doing 24 x 80 fixed-width characters, but these days, even when you have to program a device with similar terminal capability, you usually have another device without that nonsense.

Cheers,
V.