Unix Without Words: A Course Proposal 57 INTRO: overview of the ‘no doc’ philosophy why manuals are evil why man pages are evil why you should read this book despite the above “this is the last manual you'll EVER read!” CHAP 1: guessing which commands are likely to exist CHAP 2: guessing what commands are likely to be called unpredictable acronyms the Unix way usage scenario: “grep” CHAP 3: guessing what options commands might take deciphering cryptic usage messages usage scenario: “tar” guessing when order is important usage scenario: SYSV “find” CHAP 4: figuring out when it worked: silence on success recovering from errors CHAP 5: the oral tradition: your friend CHAP 6: obtaining & maintaining a personal UNIX guru feeding your guru keeping your guru happy the importance of full news feeds why your guru needs the fastest machine available free Coke: the elixir of your guru’s life maintaining your guru’s health when DO they sleep? CHAP 7: troubleshooting: when your guru won’t speak to you identifying stupid questions safely asking stupid questions CHAP 8: accepting your stress coping with failure ----------

58 Documentation? (Alternatively, maybe only chapters 6 & 7 are really necessary. Yeah, that’s the ticket: we'll call it The Unix Guru Maintenance Manual.)