Post #3284635

2026-06-10 00:39 UTC

@arun@fantastic.earth I'm not sure if not knowing how to list files and directories in a directory in a list format in reverse chronological order with directories grouped together and the trouble of figuring it out by reading an esoteric man page would be considered a UX failure. I've seen some sysadmins who don't even bother looking at man pages or using the help flag, before and (especially) after LLMs are a thing. Of course, not all man pages are informative or well written but figuring things out, and hopefully improving them, is part of learning. With LLMs, we jump straight to the result and never learn or improve anything. @jschauma@mstdn.social

Replies (1)

@arun@fantastic.earth 2026-06-10 03:10

@ayushnix@social.ayushnix.com It's not a UX failure for you because you have already spent the time learning this (and all the context leading up to it). And yes, for a sysadmin, perhaps knowing these things is important/valuable. However, the fact that there is a binary slider between `ls` and your GUI file manager _is_ a UX failure. This extends to a _lot_ of tasks that nerds like us find easy to do with a computer, which is simply not accessible to other people. Even what you can realise with an LLM is different based on how much you know about how computers work vs. not. These are all emergent properties of how technology and the people around it grew, but I think we can be more clear-eyed about how much arcana we quietly accept and proliferate. @jschauma@mstdn.social

Open ##3284636