Man Pages Debate

Discussions center on the quality, usability, readability, and relevance of Unix man pages as documentation, often comparing them to Stack Overflow, web searches, and modern alternatives.

📉 Falling 0.4x Open Source
3,770
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20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#2113
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Keywords

SCM SEE e.g freebsd.org ALSO HOWTO MIT UX ubuntu.com BUGS man pages emacs page manuals commands documentation gems manual examples

Sample Comments

LinXitoW • Jan 25, 2014 • View on HN

how are "man" pages better?

WrtCdEvrydy • Sep 26, 2020 • View on HN

wait til you look at the man pages for man... it's awesome!

jeffbee • Aug 9, 2022 • View on HN

Am I the only person who primarily reads man pages on the web?

SquareWheel • Nov 16, 2017 • View on HN

There's two mentions of man pages.

wtallis • Jun 26, 2016 • View on HN

man pages don't really solve the discoverability problem.

Mokou • Sep 19, 2021 • View on HN

Are the man pages insufficient?

MR4D • Mar 17, 2020 • View on HN

I wish man pages were this good!

fedeb95 • Nov 20, 2022 • View on HN

Strange that no one mentioned man pages. I think they're a great doc and almost always contain what I need

LinXitoW • Jan 25, 2014 • View on HN

Why is the "man" page somehow better?

probinso • Aug 30, 2019 • View on HN

before stackoverflow there was "documentation" and "man pages"; would have worked out alright