Steven M. Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu> wrote:

> On Sat, 21 Oct 2006 10:52:27 -0400, Thor Lancelot Simon <tls@rek.tjls.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I tend to think that "How-Tos" are a very bad thing: they encourage people
>> to do complex tasks, with potentially serious consequences, without the
>> background knowledge they would have if they actually looked at the primary
>> documentation for long enough to figure it out.  Then if anything goes
>> wrong, they're utterly stuck.  The NetBSD Guide seems somewhat better.
>
> That's fine -- it's not there, either.
> 
> I see your point about the risk of a How-To document; that said, they fill
> an important role: providing an overview.  There's an old English saying
> about not seeing the forest for the trees.  Man pages (and source code
> even more) are the trees; if you don't have the proper large picture,
> you're likely to miss seeing the forest.  A good How-To has copious
> references to man pages and other detailed documents, plus a few warnings
> about "here be dragons" for especially-dangerous things.

Heh, I wanted to stay out of this discussion, b/c i can think of at
least half an hour rant of the topic that I can probably deliver off
the top of my head without preparation and that will barely scratch
the surface (and just o give you an idea of how raving that rant would
be - it involves references to Euclid and Panini :)

Instead let me use an analogy.  If you are learning a foreign language
than the "documentation" is a theoretical grammar + dictionary, a
"HOWTO" (if taken to the extreme) is a phrase-book.  I claim that you
cannot learn the language efficiently from either.


Open virtually any foreign language course, and on the very first
pages you will see phrases like "My name is John.  I am from England."
etc...  And a good textbook will support your learnign experience with
providing increasinly more complex text and dialogs that demonstrate
newly introduced grammar and vocabulary.

I loath phrase-books and "phrase-book"-like HOWTOs (and I guess that's
what Thor really refers to).  I own quite a few etymological
dictionaries and books on theoretical and historical grammar of
several languages.  I still prefer to have a real textbook - a "good
HOWTO" that Steven refers above - to learn a new language (but I'm
likely to buy "documentation" - a formal grammar - ASAP too :).

SY, Uwe
-- 
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http://snark.ptc.spbu.ru/~uwe/          |       Ist zu Grunde gehen