Practice developer tooling documentation vocabulary: man pages, usage examples, error message quality, self-describing CLIs, and actionable error language.
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What is a 'man page' in the context of CLI tool documentation?
Man pages (manual pages) are the built-in documentation system of Unix/Linux. Running 'man grep' or 'man git-commit' opens the tool's manual in the terminal. Writing a man page is considered a quality signal for CLI tools.
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Which error message is an example of 'high-quality error message design'?
A high-quality error message tells the user exactly what went wrong, what they can check, and how to fix it. Vague messages like 'Error: failed' force developers to guess. The best CLIs treat error messages as first-class UX.
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What does 'the error says exactly what went wrong and how to fix it' represent in CLI design philosophy?
Actionable error messages are a DX best practice: the error identifies the problem, explains the likely cause, and suggests a concrete fix. This drastically reduces the time developers spend debugging tool failures.
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What makes a CLI 'self-describing'?
A self-describing CLI is one where a developer can figure out how to use it entirely from within the tool itself: '--help' output, clear error messages with suggested fixes, and inline examples. This is considered a hallmark of excellent CLI design.
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In tool documentation, 'usage examples' are important because:
Usage examples are the most-read section of tool documentation. A concrete, runnable example ('myapp deploy --env staging --region eu-west-1') communicates more than paragraphs of prose and lets developers be productive within minutes.