[skydhash]

> I can't believe that in 2025 it is still hard to find documentation for basic functionality in languages as ubiquitous as, say, Python.

That’s why we get familiar with the documentation manual and bookmark the web version. Then there’s offline documentation browsers (dash, devdocs,…).

> it is amazing to me that shells still exist in more-or-less the same form

Bash and ZSH are quite good for their use cases (running command). and there are shell like fish that leans more towards interactive use instead of automation. Python’s primitive are not very good for launching commands.

[rovr138]

In the case of python, it's all built-in. People just don't know their tools.

  $ python
  Python 3.13.2 (main, Mar  6 2025, 08:26:01) [Clang 15.0.0 (clang-1500.3.9.4)] on darwin
  Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
  >>> import os
  >>> help(os)

Same thing happens with so many other things.

[thunky]

Not so great if you don't know the import or it's not intuitive (pathlib, shutil).

[rovr138]

You can search in module names and summaries,

    $ python
    Python 3.13.2 (main, Mar  6 2025, 08:26:01) [Clang 15.0.0 (clang-1500.3.9.4)] on darwin
    Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
    >>> help()
    Welcome to Python 3.13's help utility! If this is your first time using
    Python, you should definitely check out the tutorial at
    https://docs.python.org/3.13/tutorial/.
    
    Enter the name of any module, keyword, or topic to get help on writing
    Python programs and using Python modules.  To get a list of available
    modules, keywords, symbols, or topics, enter "modules", "keywords",
    "symbols", or "topics".
    
    Each module also comes with a one-line summary of what it does; to list
    the modules whose name or summary contain a given string such as "spam",
    enter "modules spam".
    
    To quit this help utility and return to the interpreter,
    enter "q", "quit" or "exit".
    
    help> modules files
    
    Here is a list of modules whose name or summary contains 'files'.
    If there are any, enter a module name to get more help.
    
    compileall - Module/script to byte-compile all .py files to .pyc files.
    filecmp - Utilities for comparing files and directories.
    fileinput - Helper class to quickly write a loop over all standard input files.
    gzip - Functions that read and write gzipped files.
    idlelib.grep - Grep dialog for Find in Files functionality.
    linecache - Cache lines from Python source files.
    netrc - An object-oriented interface to .netrc files.
    pathlib - Object-oriented filesystem paths.
    plistlib - plistlib.py -- a tool to generate and parse MacOSX .plist files.
    shutil - Utility functions for copying and archiving files and directory trees.
    tempfile - Temporary files.
    ...

I know there's search engines and there's use cases. I'm just trying to highlight that some people that work in a language day in and out, don't even know how to get their documentation. I just want people to know their tools better to ask smarter questions. It won't remove questions and that's fine. Just help me help you.

[thunky]

Thanks, I never knew about that modules search.

[arduinomancer]

I’ve found that as well

It’s a good idea to take some time to understand how the official language docs are organized so that you can just jump there straight away and bypass all the noise