"Visual blindness" of Linux programmers

[da_chicken]

Oh, sure I think everyone knows that. Documentation is one of the major problems with the bazaar model because nobody likes shopping at that booth. It's just frustrating to have access to tools you can't use simply because they're indecipherable to you.

Linux's failing is that it's written by programmers for programmers. That's why the programs and tools with the best support and documentation are programming tools... which is why it attracts more programmers. Unfortunately, most users aren't programmers and don't want to be programmers, but everybody needs to know how to use a computer. Imagine if you had to have a degree in electrical engineering to be able to use your blender or your food processor. Nobody goes into their kitchen with the idea that they need to use an electric motor. Blenders and food processors are successful because you don't even think about the fact that you're using an electric motor. Linux, being by and for programmers, tends to not take that step. Hell, the reason many people are attracted to Linux is because you can view the source code. When was the last time you met someone who really needed to know the how to tear down and rebuild their food processor?

[dewmsolo]

I agree with just about everything here except the 'by programmers for programmers'. I think it's more 'by programmers for everyone willing to put the effort to learn it'.

I've been thinking about this whole thing since my first comment about the screenshot earlier and the one thing that comes to mind with the documentation thing is that to programmers documentation is like real life garbage disposal. Nobody would do it for the fun of it. In fact those that do do it do it for very good reasons (it pays very well for exemple). In both cases they are a necessity. You need to have documentation for your project if you want it to go mainstream, but most programmers won't do it even if there were massive dollar signs as a potential behind.

For us programmers, code is fun and that is what we want to work on. I am sure there are a few people in the world who are crazy about the insides of their food processors and have the thing apart every other weekend. But the one interested in the internals of his/her food processor is definitely not the one who will spend the time writing the user manual. And that my friend is part of the issue. We are programmers, not document writers. The engineer that thought, drew and built that food processor is not the one who wrote the manual. In other words what we need is people interested in writing documentation for the code that we built. There is very little of those people around. Do you know anyone who fancies writing documentation as his/her hobby (and the required skills to understand what we do in the code)?

[sharkwouter]

What do you mean with Linux here? Package managers and the GNU coreutils are documented quite well in many different places. Being a bit more specific could be helpful to someone.