One of the most useful CLI tools I think is "tldr". It's like a super-condensed version of "man" with just a common few examples, and it does the trick 90% of the time, because usually you already know (or can imagine) how a program works, you just need to remember the exact flag or syntax. Or, at least it will give you a good idea of what you can do with a tool.

I also found a tool called "howdoi" (i.e. "how do i") that was meant to do a similar thing, but with a quick search finding the first answer of the first stackoverflow result or something. So you would ask something like "how do I append to an array in python?" and it would give you a short example. Or that was the idea. When I found it, it seems to have already been deprecated and I didn't get it to work properly.

I suppose it's different for everyone... when you use the same language and framework most of the time, perhaps you have these basic questions down. But I jump around a lot and so I mix up basic concepts. It's usually just a quick search away, but opening a search engine, going to the page, scanning for the correct result etc. can add some friction. I'm sure this is why a lot of people use an LLM to answer these questions, which is sad because it could be done with a fraction the energy cost, algorithmically. If only there was a database for basic questions that's as frictionless as what tldr is for basic operations.

#cli #programming #tldr