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Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

556 pointsby randallmaover 11 years ago

87 comments

blahedoover 11 years ago
Great idea; shame about the name.<p>Here&#x27;s the problem with using words like &quot;bro&quot; (however jokingly): the problem is not with what <i>you</i>[0] are thinking when you read the word &quot;bro&quot;, but with what <i>other people</i>, especially newcomers, are thinking. The locker-room atmosphere that stuff like this creates is a huge barrier to entry for a lot of people, women especially, who infer that on top of all the technically difficult stuff that <i>everyone</i> has to learn to be CS types, they&#x27;ll also have to deal with a constant barrage of &quot;you&#x27;re not our kind&quot; flung at them by the in-group. <i>You personally</i> may not be intending that as your message, but I assure you that your personal intent does not matter when you are using language that has been associated with exclusion and discrimination.[1]<p>The problem here, if this program is actually intended to be used, is that just typing in the command would be a <i>constant reminder</i> of an entire subculture that is widely seen as[2] putting up walls and doors that say &quot;NO GIЯLS ALOUD&quot; around the programming profession, an attempt to preserve privilege. Those of you suggesting an alias are either being disingenuous or missing the point entirely.<p>[0] Meaning individuals, of whatever gender&#x2F;race&#x2F;class&#x2F;whatever, that are likely to be reading HN.<p>[1] If you don&#x27;t believe me, ponder for a moment sentences like, &quot;But I like Negroes just fine!&quot; Language matters.<p>[2] Again, <i>you</i> might not mean to reference that when you use words like &quot;brogrammer&quot;. But it&#x27;s how an awful lot of us read it.<p>EDIT: Rereading other posts on this page, I should add that I almost certainly got the phrase &quot;shame about the name&quot; stuck in my head from reading dewitt&#x27;s post. Four words, such a concise summary of my attitude! :)<p>EDIT 2: &quot;they&#x27;ll have&quot; -&gt; &quot;that <i>everyone</i> has&quot; to clarify argument. Thx vezzy-fnord.
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paulover 11 years ago
Awesome idea. Shame about the humorless nature of this community.<p>To me, a &quot;bro&quot; is a dumb, fratboy version of a man, which makes the name hilariously perfect. If you&#x27;re feeling oppressed and excluded by a command name, your real problems lie elsewhere.
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raganwaldover 11 years ago
My experience is this:<p>Some time ago, I wrote a post about CoffeeScript. As you may know, CoffeeScript is a whitespace-specific programming language.<p>I am black, and there is a small cultural wiggle-room when it comes to black people making fun of colour-based cultural issues. So I thought I could get away with calling my post &quot;White Power.&quot;<p>The response was immediate and scathing. Regardless of whether I was personally offended by my title, it was put to me that my title was inappropriate to go sailing round the front page of Hacker News, &amp;c.<p>Maybe it was, maybe it wasn&#x27;t, but you know what? These things are about how people react, not what was on my mind at the time. There is room for debate when people are doing these things specifically to provoke debate, as one finds in art and drama. But in this case, I was not an artist trying to make a point about culture, I was writing a blog post about CoffeeScript.<p>I changed the name, I think I renamed it after a Mondrian composition. A few people continued to rag me about it, but in time people forgot the name but continued to productively discuss CoffeeScript.<p>In any event, I feel for the authors. We all make our little jokes, and sometimes they land with a resounding thud. The problem, of course, is that unless we are artists provoking people into thinking about culture, these discussions are a distraction from the good work we&#x27;re trying to do.<p>So the right thing to do as a developer is change the name and move on. If it is changed, the good things in this library will live on long after people have forgotten the rhetoric expended on the choice of name.<p>It would be a shame if the library is remembered for its name instead of its functionality.
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dewittover 11 years ago
Is the &quot;bro&quot; intended to be ironic, or are the creators actually not aware that the term is used to represent the worst (most misogynistic, most crass, least mature, least dependable) people currently flocking to the industry? It is by its very definition exclusionary.<p>I suppose &quot;brogrammers&quot; might be <i>a</i> target audience, but the concept of the tool itself is pretty good for just about anyone. Shame about the name.
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nicolethenerdover 11 years ago
I&#x27;m a woman, and I think it&#x27;s hilarious and not at all sexist. Had to stop myself from laughing out loud because I&#x27;m in a library.<p>Is the association that some people will make with &quot;brogrammer&quot; culture a bit unfortunate? Sure. But there&#x27;s nothing about this program that&#x27;s making any assertions about bros, or their gender, or anything else - heck, it&#x27;s not even really talking about <i>people</i>, it&#x27;s just a play on the word &#x27;man&#x27;.<p>And if we can have a woman named Siri who lives in our phones who answers our questions, why can&#x27;t we have a bro who lives in our computer and helps us out with the command line?
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enjoover 11 years ago
This is great. I&#x27;m really just looking for examples most of the time I&#x27;m looking through a man page anyways.<p>As for the &quot;bro&quot;trevorsy that is brewing in these comments. Lighten up for crying out loud.
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blitiover 11 years ago
This thread has opened my eyes to the sexist atrocities carried on throughout the tech industry. The first obvious one is my current language of choice, Python. That is the worst and most sexist name for language. Why should female programmers have to put up with it? Python == Snake == Slang for male genitalia. It is so obvious! Ladies, I&#x27;m sorry for all those years of oppressive code that I&#x27;ve spent writing. But let&#x27;s continue. What about Unix. Yeah, Unix. Doesn&#x27;t it sound like the word Eunuch? Which is a term used for a castrated man that guards a harem (full of sexual slaves). How could I have missed it? Amazing. Ever since the 1970s, we have been making women interact with a system that was named after a sexual slavery term. Just awful. I wish I were done, but no. There are still many terms out there that are just offensive. What about the server Gunicorn? It is a play on the word Unicorn, which we all know is a fictitious (I hope) animal that features an enlarged horn on its forehead. That darn horn just looks like a penis, doesn&#x27;t it? Well, that&#x27;s is offensive to women. I&#x27;m gonna email the Gunicorn team to give them an earful. What were they thinking? Worst is that this is just a small collection of samples. What does C stand for? Cunt? Wait, what about F? Fellatio? Oh man&#x2F;woman, we need to really reconsider sexism in this industry. Cause <i>bro</i>, its simply not working out.
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gruseomover 11 years ago
I&#x27;ve often wished for something like this. Most of us learn by example.<p>I fear that the humor in it, much as I like humor, is a mistake. First, it comes across as a gender troll. Any technical attention the tool receives will be smothered by that avalanche. (Exhibit A: this thread.) More importantly, it impedes how the tool needs to work: get to the point immediately and cut everything else. Man pages may be Byzantine, but they do this well.<p>If I need examples for curl, examples for curl are all I want to see. They should be laid out readably and minimally (a nontrivial design problem). The last thing I want is a joke repeated everywhere. I&#x27;d say the same about the upvoting and downvoting stuff that appears in there: it&#x27;s extraneous and distracting.<p>When I&#x27;m stuck on a shell command, it&#x27;s usually because I have a specific task I&#x27;m trying to do. All I want is for the light bulb in my head to switch on so I can go &quot;Oh I get it!&quot; and go off to do the task. The best way is to see an example that&#x27;s close enough to what I&#x27;m trying to do that it&#x27;s like a magnet that attracts my specific task and snaps it in place. That&#x27;s why I like the idea of this tool. It should focus on getting the user to that moment as quickly as possible.
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krstckover 11 years ago
Token woman in tech here, with the disclaimer that I do not speak for &quot;women&quot; or anyone else but myself.<p>I am sensitive to the issue of exclusionary culture within tech. I think there are times when this is a necessary discussion to have. I want to see more women get involved in programming, and I am happy to point out instances of men perpetuating a sexist culture.<p>With that said, I don&#x27;t see it here. I really don&#x27;t. And I understand the concept of lots of little things adding up over time, where one joke would not be offensive, but a constant barrage would be. I think of myself as someone who isn&#x27;t bothered at all by swearing, but I have a housemate who literally swears in every other sentence and it is the most grating thing to me. It&#x27;s not once instance, it&#x27;s the accumulation over time. But I don&#x27;t think this is similar.<p>&quot;Bro&quot; being offensive seems very highly specific to particular subcultures that I guess I&#x27;m not a part of. I guess there are people for whom that word has some highly negative connotation, maybe the people who are called &quot;bros&quot; derogatorily, but I don&#x27;t understand why this pun is offensive to women. Gender isn&#x27;t some super shameful characteristic that I flinch at any reminder of its existence. If I used this tool, I guarantee you that I would not be subtlely reminded that I am an &quot;other&quot;, that I am not a &quot;bro&quot;; I use git all day every day and I honestly forget that it has any other meaning.<p>I hate to say this, because women feeling excluded from tech is a big, real problem, but this conversation trivializes it. People who need to hear that this is a problem are going to see this discussion and think that women are being ridiculous. Women are not underrepresented in tech because of <i>this</i>. But thanks for contributing to the stereotype that women whine and complain about trivial stuff, bros.
morschover 11 years ago
Looks similar to the established commandlinefu site: <a href="http://www.commandlinefu.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.commandlinefu.com&#x2F;</a><p>There are scripts to search it from the terminal, e.g. <a href="https://github.com/t9md/cmdline-fu" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;t9md&#x2F;cmdline-fu</a><p>It&#x27;s a nice complement to man pages, especially since it contains complex examples using multiple tools linked by pipes, which is where the terminal really shines.
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vezzy-fnordover 11 years ago
Clearly this is very offensive, exclusionary and misogynistic. I mean, it&#x27;s not like software has ever been named based on word play-oh, wait...<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin_%28Scheme_implementation%29" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Stalin_%28Scheme_implementatio...</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_Orifice" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Back_Orifice</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagios" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Nagios</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAME" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;LAME</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_%28protocol%29" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kermit_%28protocol%29</a><p>Then it&#x27;s very common for forks of other software, or software that is meant to compliment another program, to humorously reference the original program. The examples are numerous.<p>&quot;Brogrammer&quot; is a very recent neologism that originated out of a perceived frat culture amongst primarily (surprise) web developers, but it&#x27;s still mostly used to describe a hypothetical bottom of the barrel person, rather than any seriously observed overtaking of programming by immature frat boys.<p>&quot;Bro&quot; dates far before that. I think it&#x27;s perfectly valid to use it as a pun on &quot;man&quot;, which originally stood for &quot;manual&quot;, yes. But that&#x27;s how word play works. The GNU Project hosts jokes like these on their site, too. I haven&#x27;t heard of anyone complaining.<p>If you can&#x27;t stand it, alias it. But being dramatic about it is ridiculous.
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maguirreover 11 years ago
People, calm the f@#k down. This tool appears to be very useful and its intent is to make your life easier. If you feel the name bothers you so much that you can&#x27;t use it then that&#x27;s your prerogative just like it was the developer&#x27;s prerogative to name it whatever he&#x2F;she wanted
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Karunamonover 11 years ago
For real? Someone does a play on words with man pages and we end up with a 546 comment thread about SJW bullshit?<p>Unbelievable. Someone does a cool thing and the discussion is <i>about the name they chose for it</i>. Not what it does, not what problem it solves, but because someone, somewhere, might have an issue with the name.<p>Concentration on the minutae of mostly irrelevant things instead of stuff that actually matters, like function and effect. Basically everything a developer hates.<p>What the fuck.
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boyakaover 11 years ago
What a shit-fest in the comments. Why am I here... I don&#x27;t even know what this website is about. I like the idea of examples though. That has always been one of the major ways for me to learn, even though my superiors throughout my educational career seemed to think it ruins the learning process.
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AznHisokaover 11 years ago
To the OP: Brilliant product. About the name: Brilliant marketing. Extreme hatred or disgust is better than indifference :) Enjoy all the PR. Those who find the this useful will care less about the name you give it.
nsxwolfover 11 years ago
Geeks mocking bros while pretending to be tolerant and inclusive. Classic HN. Let&#x27;s see you make fun of African American Vernacular English next.
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darbeloover 11 years ago
Here&#x27;s a nickel kid, go buy an operating system with decent man pages.
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ronaldxover 11 years ago
The concept is great and should be promoted: so many times I&#x27;ve just needed a basic example and been unable to find one.<p>Man pages are often not fit for purpose and fail at basic pedagogy. Poor man pages (alongside poor UX generally) renders good software unusable.<p>It&#x27;s really an important task to fix this problem - I can&#x27;t begin to imagine how many hours this could save. This has the potential to make it easier for people to try software out and could lower barriers to enter computer science.<p>The name is clever, I suppose, but it&#x27;s simply not appropriate and contradicts any goal of inclusive openness, and I find that important. I feel conflicted, but I can&#x27;t contribute to this project under this name. :(
skybrianover 11 years ago
At this point it&#x27;s not about taking offense (I think everyone understands the pun now, and it&#x27;s funny the first time.) We can assume good intentions but it&#x27;s still okay to say this is bad marketing.<p>From a marketing perspective, giving your product a name some people hate is polarizing. It might get attention in the short term and is certainly memorable, but in the longer term isn&#x27;t a great move because they&#x27;ll cringe every time they use it or have to talk about it and the complaints will continue. So why not pick something else?<p>Examples of badly named projects that were renamed, just to show it can be done and it&#x27;s not a big deal: forplay -&gt; PlayN testacular -&gt; karma
hinchleyover 11 years ago
I know the &quot;man&quot; in &quot;manpages&quot; is short for &quot;manual&quot;, but when I first saw this site, I took the &quot;bro&quot; in &quot;bropages&quot; to be short for &quot;little brother&quot;. If the &quot;man&quot;-page is the old, official, formal documentation for a command, the &quot;bro&quot;-page was the young, informal, still-evolving version of the documentation. In this sense, the name is rather apt.<p>The negative connotations of the word bro appear to be rather US-centric. I am Australian, and I have several friends from New Zealand who use the word bro as a term of mate-ship and affection (I&#x27;ve even heard one friend call his mum bro).<p>With that said, it&#x27;s great that people are conscious of the affect of matters like this on the inclusiveness of the community - but in this case, when the word &quot;bro&quot; has such a variety of associations, perhaps we should judge the book by its content, and not its title.
teddyhover 11 years ago
Let me fix this with a one-line shell function:<p><pre><code> eg(){ man &quot;$@&quot; 2&gt;&#x2F;dev&#x2F;null|sed -ne &#x27;&#x2F;^EXAMPLE&#x2F;{:a;p;n;&#x2F;^[^ ]&#x2F;q;ba}&#x27;|${MANPAGER:-pager -s};} </code></pre> Now there’s an “<i>eg</i>” command to display just the EXAMPLES (or EXAMPLE) section of a Unix manual page.<p>For example:<p><pre><code> $ eg cat EXAMPLES cat f - g Output f&#x27;s contents, then standard input, then g&#x27;s contents. cat Copy standard input to standard output. </code></pre> If the command gives no output, the manual has no EXAMPLES section. Consider writing some examples and submitting a patch to the manual.<p>There, I <i>fixed</i> it. Now nobody needs this program (or should I say “brogram”) anymore. (Thanks to pbhjpbhj for the name: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7122063" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7122063</a>)
victorhooiover 11 years ago
Are you kidding me?<p>Hundreds of idiotic comments on this page from Social Justice Warriors with too much time and nothing better to do.<p>People, it&#x27;s the word Bro... get over it. It took me a second to get the joke (it&#x27;s from man pages), I thought it was semi funny but whatever, it seems useful actually.<p>Why can&#x27;t we keep the contents in topic? The authors put in effort to make this - how about we commend them for that, instead of tearing them down, when we&#x27;ve contributed nothing to this project.
codergirlover 11 years ago
Woman in tech here. I almost skipped reading the post because I instinctively thought &quot;bro pages&quot;, like man pages but for bros. There are lots of bad ideas out there, shame this is a great idea with a name that inadvertantly sabotages it.
geeteeover 11 years ago
This pile of comments is such a fucking downer. Get the sand out of your proverbial vaginas.
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jcutrellover 11 years ago
The fun of programming languages and open source software is, guess what, you can change it. You don&#x27;t like it? Write an alias in your bashrc.<p>OSS authors are not held to a standard defined by all of you - they are welcome to express themselves however they want. For instance, my mother would find Brainfuck quite offensive. That doesn&#x27;t mean the author should change the name.<p>I think the play on words is quite clever. I also think that if anyone is being marginalized, it is the &quot;bro&quot; - identifying the stereotype and calling out common the stereotypical language habits (&quot;bro ...no&quot;).<p>And now for my personal opinion... If you&#x27;re worried about the cultural implications of the names of software (rather than things that ACTUALLY marginalize women, like lower average salaries, micro-aggression and objectification, and massive imbalance of gender in the hiring process), then I think you&#x27;re probably never going to be happy with anything unless it&#x27;s vanilla. The fine line between comedy and tragedy in the artistic side of programming is often misunderstood, so for now I&#x27;m going to go gem install bro.<p>As a second note, why don&#x27;t we say things like Homebrew marginalizes the alcoholics or those addicted to coffee? Because that&#x27;s silly, right? Right. Fight more important fights with the same vigor.
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fleshweaselover 11 years ago
If you are getting that upset about the use of the word bro you have bigger problems
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evilduckover 11 years ago
It&#x27;s like &#x2F;r&#x2F;ShitRedditSays has invaded HN.
tight_scientistover 11 years ago
I think it&#x27;s a real shame that the whole discussion here seems to be about the name the author chose for this project, rather than the actual project. Surprisingly, the discussion on Reddit seems to be much more constructive and interested in talking about the project itself.
NigelTufnelover 11 years ago
I like the idea: basically, it&#x27;s a &quot;kind of Stack Overflow in your shell&quot;.<p>The &quot;bro&quot; name is great actually - made #1 on the front page just because of it.
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mattdeboardover 11 years ago
If you like the idea but hate the name, symlinks &amp; aliases.
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sgs1370over 11 years ago
Why don&#x27;t man pages have more examples, is it because of space, or the work to maintain them (including making sure they still work?)<p>Although man pages is where I go for the syntax and option definitions, stack-overflow has become my go-to place for examples. I think this &quot;bro pages&quot; is an attempt to fill a need but if the tool-owner is willing, a man page approved by the owner seems like it will be more authoritative.<p>Man pages seem like a great place for people who want to contribute to open-source to try and submit patches containing examples (unless examples are prohibited by most patch-approvers). I hate writing documentation, including examples, so I won&#x27;t be adding in either spot, but lots of people on stack-overflow seem to have a desire and some have a knack for it.
tobinharrisover 11 years ago
Learn by example is powerful. Installed. Great work.<p>I am also concerned about the gender situation. I solved it with these commands:<p>ln -s &#x2F;Users&#x2F;tobinharris&#x2F;.rvm&#x2F;gems&#x2F;ruby-2.0.0-p0&#x2F;bin&#x2F;bro &#x2F;Users&#x2F;tobinharris&#x2F;.rvm&#x2F;gems&#x2F;ruby-2.0.0-p0&#x2F;bin&#x2F;sister<p>ln -s &#x2F;Users&#x2F;tobinharris&#x2F;.rvm&#x2F;gems&#x2F;ruby-2.0.0-p0&#x2F;bin&#x2F;bro &#x2F;Users&#x2F;tobinharris&#x2F;.rvm&#x2F;gems&#x2F;ruby-2.0.0-p0&#x2F;bin&#x2F;lady<p>ln -s &#x2F;Users&#x2F;tobinharris&#x2F;.rvm&#x2F;gems&#x2F;ruby-2.0.0-p0&#x2F;bin&#x2F;bro &#x2F;Users&#x2F;tobinharris&#x2F;.rvm&#x2F;gems&#x2F;ruby-2.0.0-p0&#x2F;bin&#x2F;lass<p>ln -s &#x2F;Users&#x2F;tobinharris&#x2F;.rvm&#x2F;gems&#x2F;ruby-2.0.0-p0&#x2F;bin&#x2F;bro &#x2F;Users&#x2F;tobinharris&#x2F;.rvm&#x2F;gems&#x2F;ruby-2.0.0-p0&#x2F;bin&#x2F;sko
staredover 11 years ago
Great! &#x27;man&#x27; usually is a good reference but one of the worst place to start.<p>One comment: the thing with voting takes _way_ to much space, and hence not that many things are visible. (Maybe a _single_ line would be better.) But the idea with feedback is great!
fharsover 11 years ago
It should be renamed &quot;cargo&quot; as it encourages cargo cult programming <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cargo_cult_programming</a>
certainly_notover 11 years ago
I use this bash function to achieve something similar using the existing (and much larger) database commandlinefu.com:<p><pre><code> howdoi() { curl &quot;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.commandlinefu.com&#x2F;commands&#x2F;matching&#x2F;$(echo &quot;$@&quot; | sed &#x27;s&#x2F; &#x2F;-&#x2F;g&#x27;)&#x2F;$(echo -n $@ | base64)&#x2F;plaintext&quot;; }</code></pre>
tzsover 11 years ago
&quot;Bro&quot; can have many meanings [1] [2]. Most of the complaints seem to be coming from people who are aware of just one of these, which is not the one most people think of when the term is used.<p>[1] <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bro" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;knowyourmeme.com&#x2F;memes&#x2F;bro</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/06/21/193881290/jeah-we-mapped-out-the-four-basic-aspects-of-being-a-bro" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;codeswitch&#x2F;2013&#x2F;06&#x2F;21&#x2F;193881290&#x2F;jea...</a>
hodgesmrover 11 years ago
This is a neat idea. I won&#x27;t comment on the name--but observations on the tool:<p>Looks like anyone can submit examples to this. Users need to be very careful before blindly copy-pasting the &quot;example&quot; scripts into their shell. Hopefully the voting system will remedy this, but that&#x27;s not guaranteed. While not nearly as dangerous as copy-pasting from the browser[1], still proceed with caution.<p>[1] <a href="http://thejh.net/misc/website-terminal-copy-paste" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;thejh.net&#x2F;misc&#x2F;website-terminal-copy-paste</a>
ComSubVieover 11 years ago
A very nice idea and I hope it will gain a lot more examples (at least I will try to add further examples)!<p>And I love the name and it&#x27;s play on the manpages. But a lot here seems to recommend changing it - can anybody explain to a non-native-speaker what the problem is with the current name?
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Deinosover 11 years ago
A good idea, but I see it taking some backlash for the name, which would be unfortunate because, aside from the name, it really is not perpetuating &quot;bro&quot;gramming, etc.
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Toamover 11 years ago
It looks similar to <a href="https://github.com/chrisallenlane/cheat" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;chrisallenlane&#x2F;cheat</a>
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usesover 11 years ago
man is short for manual. bro can be short for brochure. Which kind of makes sense anyway.
jtheoryover 11 years ago
Why do so many of the arguments on this page seem to think that &quot;bro&quot; is part of male culture?<p>I&#x27;m male. I&#x27;m even American. I don&#x27;t think anyone <i>including my biological brother</i> has ever called me &quot;bro&quot; in my entire life. Maybe because I&#x27;m 38 and not 22?<p>When I see something being pitched&#x2F;marketed&#x2F;whatever using the word &quot;bro&quot;, I have never imagined it could be targeted at me.<p>Just now I figured I&#x27;d visit the site before commenting, and I mistyped the domain (the .com is the FB profile for some frat-related group). Oops; so I googled &quot;bro pages&quot;.<p>The FIRST HIT is something about the playboy mansion. Nice.<p>I&#x27;d be vaguely annoyed if someone standing near me noticed that tab (&quot;bro: just get to the point!&quot;) open on my browser, so unless there&#x27;s a roaring wave of approval and it&#x27;s suddenly better than regular man pages (which aren&#x27;t bad; I skim fast) plus StackOverflow, I&#x27;m not using it.<p>Eh, with a little luck they&#x27;ll change it and try again. The idea seems solid.
piyush_soniover 11 years ago
Before opening this HN article, I had a &#x27;faint&#x27; fear that people might be discussing some made up sexist issues here rather than what it is about. Oh, how my fears were fiercely true.
fleitzover 11 years ago
Great idea, also dear haters if you don&#x27;t like the name just fork it and change it.
gfodorover 11 years ago
White Knight News
donotsurveilover 11 years ago
The name is terrible.<p>Here are a few suggestions of names:<p>- ccex for common case examples - howdoi for how do I - comcasex for common case examples - usex for use examples - usagex for usage examples - howtouse for how to use - ill-namedpoorlythoughtoutcommand for bro - loudandobnoxiousdespicableman for bro
hfover 11 years ago
I humbly submit an implementation of `eg`. It solves the <i>technical</i> problem discussed here for a selection of programms (notably git!):<p><pre><code> alias eg=&#x27;man --pager=&#x27;\&#x27;&#x27;less -p &quot;^[A-Z]* ?EXAMPLES&quot;&#x27;\&#x27;&#x27;&#x27; </code></pre> This obviously depends on the quality of the man-pages.<p>Witness: `eg git pull` (with a recent enough Bash, `eg git-pull` otherwise), `eg awk`, `eg cat` or even `eg man`.<p>Ironically, the curl man-page doesn&#x27;t have a separate Examples section; the authors prefer to intersperse those throughout the text.<p>The name was coined here by imdsm[0] -- I had been using `examples` previously.<p>[0] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7121505" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=7121505</a>
schnevetsover 11 years ago
I think the name just needs an acronym!<p><pre><code> B.R.O. - Brief, Reviewed Orders B.R.O. - Big Repository of Operations B.R.O. - B.R.O. Responds Often B.R.O. - Bitter Ruby Organizers </code></pre> The possibilities are endless!
Myrmornisover 11 years ago
I think that a command giving terse examples of unix command usage has the potential to be really useful, and I was excited when I saw there were 614 comments.<p>I&#x27;m very disappointed to see that the comments are full of do-gooders criticizing the author&#x27;s choice of name for the command. She or he is free to call it what he&#x2F;she likes. Maybe those do-gooders should look up `bro alias` and discuss the project itself instead of trying to sanitize the world to better fit their personal sensibilities.
noodlyover 11 years ago
Good idea, but to really supplement man-pages it should also support sections e.g. &quot;bro 2 write&quot; for getting common-case example how to use write function.
Tloewaldover 11 years ago
Great idea and the name is funny, but it seems to me that the obvious name, just sitting there waiting to be used, is <i>help</i>. Another option would simply be to subvert man (since this is far more useful than man) so e.g. man gives you the examples but gives you a keystroke option to switch to the original man page in the case you actually want it.
whistlerbrkover 11 years ago
Can they alias bro with sis so the name doesn&#x27;t matter?<p>This is a great idea I&#x27;d hate if the project name overshadowed the potential.
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mayneackover 11 years ago
3 entries for alias -- submit your own example with &quot;bro add alias&quot;<p># make &#x27;sis&#x27; equivalent to &#x27;bro&#x27; alias sis=bro<p><pre><code> bro thanks to upvote (1) bro ...no to downvote (0) </code></pre> .....................................................................................................................
spoilerover 11 years ago
I seriously can&#x27;t fathom why so many people have a problem with the name (because it may or may not affect a third party, however has not <i>directly</i> affected the person writing the post. Wat). Y U mad, bro?! [1]<p>It&#x27;s a cool thing, I love the whimsical name (I find it witty and clever)!<p>[1] I apologise for that; it was just too tempting!
methodinover 11 years ago
Bro, short for browse?
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steveplaceover 11 years ago
remember when we didn&#x27;t have to check our privilege before reading HN?<p>that was nice.
maguirreover 11 years ago
In the silly discussion, I do have a couple questions. Can this be used in a machine that&#x27;s not always connected to the internet? Considering the ranking method is decided via votes, won&#x27;t (theoretically) results change from one day to the other?
mmcclureover 11 years ago
Went to bropages.com later to install this (instead of .org). The irony, it hurts.
RobertLongover 11 years ago
I&#x27;m glad the downvote system exists but, what happens if it&#x27;s the only entry for a command?<p># Cleans malware from system sudo rm -rf &#x2F;<p><pre><code> bro thanks 4 to upvote (1) bro ...no 4 to downvote (9)</code></pre>
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ygraover 11 years ago
A nice touch in PowerShell is that this kind of thing is already included, as the cmdlet help is structured into different sections, one of which is examples. So Get-Help Get-Foo -Examples gives you them directly.
jclemover 11 years ago
There&#x27;s another tool pretty similar to this that I really like. Many of the entries actually have a pretty extensive &quot;EXAMPLES&quot; section (I remember the `tar` one actually being super thorough in its examples). Some of them don&#x27;t, but they typically have a thorough explanation of what every flag for that specific command actually does (I&#x27;d rather...you know..learn how something works rather than just copy and paste a bunch of commands and flags). I can&#x27;t remember what it&#x27;s called.
siddbootsover 11 years ago
How about &quot;ma&#x27;am pages&quot;?
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c7b0rgover 11 years ago
This looks like a cute productivity hack that I will probably use. So sorry for OP that people getting offended by words and tipping fedoras is more serious than creativity.
AgathaTheWitchover 11 years ago
Absolutely brilliant. Love the name.
vargover 11 years ago
Awesome, I always browse the man pages looking for examples ...
choicesmadeover 11 years ago
Funny timing, I published a similar projects just a few weeks ago!<p><a href="https://github.com/rprieto/tldr" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;rprieto&#x2F;tldr</a><p>It doesn&#x27;t have all the &quot;bro&quot; features, but has a few extra ones too:<p>- less offensive name :) - syntax highlighting of input parameters - pages are stored on Github (pull request friendly) - but no way to upload&#x2F;vote on suggestions for now<p>Happy to hear any suggestions!
zequelover 11 years ago
I&#x27;m not offended, not sure if it&#x27;s sexist but I think it&#x27;s immature and unprofessional. Kinda like a fart joke.
spoilerover 11 years ago
I seriously can&#x27;t fathom why so many people have a problem with the name (because it may or may not affect a third party, however has not <i>directly</i> affected the person writing the post. Wat). Y U mad, bro?! [1]<p>It&#x27;s a cool thing, I love the whimsical name (I find it witty and clever)!<p>[1] I apologise, for that; it was just too tempting!
SrslyJoshover 11 years ago
Pro (not bro) tip:<p>1. PAGER=less; export PAGER 2. man somecmd 3. Type &quot;G&quot; and hit ctrl-b once or twice<p>Examples in man pages! Who knew?
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jrockwayover 11 years ago
A ruby project, what a surprise.<p><pre><code> $ bro rm rm -rf &#x2F; </code></pre> I approve of this form of documentation.
ishenerover 11 years ago
“Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others, it is the only means.” - Albert Einstein
Sami_Lehtinenover 11 years ago
Afaik, this link wasn&#x27;t visible well enough. <a href="http://bropages.org/browse" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bropages.org&#x2F;browse</a> it should be made easier to find at top of the page.<p>Btw. Nice derailing with most of comments.
pencilcodeover 11 years ago
I think it should be sis pages.
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csuperover 11 years ago
Bro, do you even code?<p>I like the concept btw...
kristopolousover 11 years ago
I wrote an identical thing 10 years ago. went nowhere. boohoo for me.
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ryan-allenover 11 years ago
Actually there are really good points in this thread.<p>I never thought of manpages as sexist but certainly typing man this and man that all the time could offend some people.<p>We certainly should do something about this.
chover 11 years ago
This looks rather useful, though man pages should also contain examples, but a desperate command to just reach the examples would be nice. I would have called it &quot;how.&quot;
jjszover 11 years ago
I&#x27;m loving these social experiments! Reminds me of gorgasm.
DanBCover 11 years ago
I hope someone is analysing the voting patterns in threads like these because it&#x27;s pretty clear that HN has been invaded by MRAs.
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politicianover 11 years ago
So much for just taking one quick look at HN, then getting to work. Next time, I&#x27;m going to stick to Quibb.
be5invisover 11 years ago
It is the `get-help &lt;command&gt; -examples` equalivent in Powershell, right?
hibbeligover 11 years ago
Sis pages: like bro pages, but with better examples.
shurcooLover 11 years ago
This is neat; I want[1] something similar for Go types as well.<p>For example, say I&#x27;m looking at godoc for <a href="http://godoc.org/go/build#Package" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;godoc.org&#x2F;go&#x2F;build#Package</a> and I see all these descriptive comments for the fields:<p><pre><code> type Package struct { Dir string &#x2F;&#x2F; directory containing package sources Name string &#x2F;&#x2F; package name Doc string &#x2F;&#x2F; documentation synopsis ImportPath string &#x2F;&#x2F; import path of package (&quot;&quot; if unknown) Root string &#x2F;&#x2F; root of Go tree where this package lives SrcRoot string &#x2F;&#x2F; package source root directory (&quot;&quot; if unknown) PkgRoot string &#x2F;&#x2F; package install root directory (&quot;&quot; if unknown) BinDir string &#x2F;&#x2F; command install directory (&quot;&quot; if unknown) Goroot bool &#x2F;&#x2F; package found in Go root PkgObj string &#x2F;&#x2F; installed .a file AllTags []string &#x2F;&#x2F; tags that can influence file selection in this directory ConflictDir string &#x2F;&#x2F; this directory shadows Dir in $GOPATH &#x2F;&#x2F; Source files GoFiles []string &#x2F;&#x2F; .go source files (excluding CgoFiles, TestGoFiles, XTestGoFiles) </code></pre> I&#x27;d love to see a random sample data of that type, e.g.:<p><pre><code> (*build.Package)(&amp;build.Package{ Dir: (string)(&quot;&#x2F;Users&#x2F;Dmitri&#x2F;Dropbox&#x2F;Work&#x2F;2013&#x2F;GoLand&#x2F;src&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;shurcooL&#x2F;go&#x2F;vcs&quot;), Name: (string)(&quot;vcs&quot;), Doc: (string)(&quot;Package for getting status of a repo under vcs.&quot;), ImportPath: (string)(&quot;github.com&#x2F;shurcooL&#x2F;go&#x2F;vcs&quot;), Root: (string)(&quot;&#x2F;Users&#x2F;Dmitri&#x2F;Dropbox&#x2F;Work&#x2F;2013&#x2F;GoLand&quot;), SrcRoot: (string)(&quot;&#x2F;Users&#x2F;Dmitri&#x2F;Dropbox&#x2F;Work&#x2F;2013&#x2F;GoLand&#x2F;src&quot;), PkgRoot: (string)(&quot;&#x2F;Users&#x2F;Dmitri&#x2F;Dropbox&#x2F;Work&#x2F;2013&#x2F;GoLand&#x2F;pkg&quot;), BinDir: (string)(&quot;&#x2F;Users&#x2F;Dmitri&#x2F;Dropbox&#x2F;Work&#x2F;2013&#x2F;GoLand&#x2F;bin&quot;), Goroot: (bool)(false), PkgObj: (string)(&quot;&quot;), AllTags: ([]string)([]string{}), ConflictDir: (string)(&quot;&quot;), GoFiles: ([]string)([]string{ (string)(&quot;git.go&quot;), (string)(&quot;hg.go&quot;), (string)(&quot;vcs.go&quot;), }), </code></pre> (A couple of them, putting the most commonly occurring samples on top, etc.)<p>Perhaps Sourcegraph will offer something like this in the future.<p>[1] Well, I&#x27;m slowly working on achieving this myself in my spare time.
HowardJover 11 years ago
This whole thread is silly.<p>The &quot;Bro&quot; has nothing to do with brogrammer or that misogynist culture. It&#x27;s a pun on &quot;man&quot; pages.<p>And most people in tech who use the term bro are not referring to the brogrammer culture. They&#x27;re using the bro slang popularized by MMORPGs&#x2F;MOBAs&#x2F;4chan&#x2F;internet memes, since like World of Warcraft 2004.
mumbiover 11 years ago
Great idea. Never been a fan of the whole bro thing, but I say keep the name. If the women want a &#x27;sister pages&#x27;, let them make it.
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vacriover 11 years ago
Crazy that you have to have Ruby installed first.
dreamfactory2over 11 years ago
Sticking it to the man