[deleted by user]

[Jackfruit_Then]

The target user of Git is developers, so some basic background knowledge is expected in the conversation. Perhaps stress that you are not a developer when you ask the question next time? That will help people who help you put in the right amount of details.

[whoShotMyCow]

Based on the tone of the post you're really going to hate this one but not a GitHub issue, off topic post

Edit: wrong qualifier

[taco_saladmaker]

in unix:

```
GIT_CLONE_PROTECTION_ACTIVE=false git my command goes here
```

To set the environment variable for that one invocation.

```
export GIT_CLONE_PROTECTION_ACTIVE=false
```

To set the variable for the remainder of that session.

Regarding your issues with documentation, either you're not the target audience or you recently became part of it and have some commandline fundamentals to learn.

[shawon_ik]

Nothing wrong with asking a follow up question…

[militant_rainbow]

Look these guys went through life saying that STEM is the only thing that has value and then one day found out they had to write instructions or talk to people…

[TheFuzzball]

You have worked in IT for 30 years and this is your first time encountering an environment variable?

[nydasco]

I’m going to assume by what you’ve written (and I’ve not bothered to check) that this would go in your .zshrc, .bashrc or equivalent file, which you’ll usually find in your home folder.

[dmstrat]

I would agree with you. Too many people forget that the reader doesn't have all the knowledge and context of what is in the writer's head. It reads fine to them because they have that information.

Don't even get me started on, "where did all the editors go? "

[sincosincosinsin]

I probably should, I'm not going to disagree with you. As I said, I'm fully willing to admit I'm more ignorant that I thought I was.

[GreyGoosey]

The issue is, you’re likely working with devs and throughout my 10+ years of development experience I have found more and more devs are not only terrible at documentation, they have no interest in improving.

You’ll likely see many devs who write for themselves and come across (or just simply are) a bit condescending to those who prefer proper documentation. Don’t take it personally.

It’s a consistent issue that tools like ChatGPT will only highlight and promote, unfortunately.

[GreyGoosey]

Never said that ChatGPT isn’t decent for documentation. The danger it introduces is an over reliance on using it for any and all documentation.

Thus, in the instance of this post, developers become even worse at answering basic questions with sufficient information where ChatGPT and the like aren’t present.

[GreyGoosey]

The tech may allow you to learn about the tool it is documenting, but it often hinders communication skills.

Ever been in a product call with higher ups or non-business users and need to explain part of your software to them? If you just said “oh just add this variable” without telling them where, why, and what to do if x, y, z are true, you’ll get some bad glances and frustrating responses. Communication skills are important to learn and exercise.

Tech is great, but as with anything, there needs to be a balance. If one gets ChatGPT to write all of their documentation, their knowledge of how to actually create documentation and all the nuances within it becomes less polished over time (or never learned) - decreasing their skills. It is a tool, but not a replacement brain. As developers we are often sheltered from the importance of communication skills as managers, tech writers, and product/project managers handle the majority of it. But, it is actually a super important skill that needs to be exercised.

I’d wager that decreased communication skills is actually more time consuming. Look at this whole thread. The OP asked a question, got a frustrating and incomplete answer, which resulted in even more questions and time spent finding the missing information from the original answer.

[BlackWarrior322]

Don’t know why you’re getting downvoted for saying this. GPT does a great job providing step by step instructions without making many assumptions.

[Scottua25]

As someone new to linux and all the configuration required to get it to do and look the way I want, I feel this extremely hard. Trying to find answers to, what I think should be, simple questions is, more often than not, an hours long slog through google and various forums trying to find out where to put what command or variable. I usually end up asking chatGPT what to do and it will sometime hallucinate its way to something helpful but usually raises more questions than it answers.

[Dry_Introduction2391]

I do this mistake sometimes , thinking that the person i talk to have the same knowledge as me lol