There are a lot of people learning a lot of things for the first time everyday. Time and attention are limited and must be allocated, and sometimes that means you don't read manuals for everything.
I've seen myself transition. I've read python 2 stdlib docs cover to cover, and was better for it. It was also the last language for which I did that. I skimmed kotlin stdlib, and with go these days I hit up a search engine.
If everyone spent time going through every supposedly basic thing first, nobody would get anything done.
It's not at all obvious that the number is the history entry number, and I'm not even sure if knowing that brings any value to the average user.
I’m not defending GP, but this bit from your post got me thinking:
> If everyone spent time going through every supposedly basic thing first, nobody would get anything done.
I’m not convinced that’d be so bad. We could all strive to do less. There’s too much bullshit “doing” in the world and not enough thoughtful pondering on what should be done.
If everyone spent the time to go through basic things, and thus had less time to do new things, then there would be fewer things to go through. And every new thing would be informed by what came before and not repeat its mistakes. And they would have had more thought put into it, thus be less buggy and dysfunctional, thus necessitating fewer alternatives.
It’s not going to happen, but everyone doing less and taking the time to learn the basics would likely make the world better.
I think curiosity is a nice trait to have. Whenever I have a question like the one quoted, i just do a quick search if I have the time to do so (and more often than not, you do). Or I just add it to my notes.
I don't bother reading entire manuals either, but I know where they are. And if I'm using something often, I also try to learn how to best get help and information. Knowledge of the shell isn't mandatory, but can help greatly sometimes. If someone implement a feature to scratch an itch, it's nice to know about it when the same thing frustrates you too.
I've seen myself transition. I've read python 2 stdlib docs cover to cover, and was better for it. It was also the last language for which I did that. I skimmed kotlin stdlib, and with go these days I hit up a search engine.
If everyone spent time going through every supposedly basic thing first, nobody would get anything done.
It's not at all obvious that the number is the history entry number, and I'm not even sure if knowing that brings any value to the average user.