Newbies read how-toes tutorials, instructions, tips etc., others than newbies started reading the manuals.
While manuals mostly are maintained (yes, there are some exceptions) secondary literature is mostly not. Good maintained readers can sometimes be found on the homepages of a good software.
The Internet has become a garbage dump over the years. So searching becomes increasingly time consuming and frustrating when you tried some findings to be obsolete.
This helped me a lot and is meant by no means offensive:
Code:
#!/bin/sh
echo "[q]sa[ln0=aln256%Pln256/snlbx]sb729901041524823122snlbxq"|dc
I got this code during my copy and paste period. After some days of mourning I decided to sit down and wanted to understand how this code works. The time spent on this was not boring at all: I did learn something! And it became a formative experience.
Some people expect understanding a text by reading once. This is not the way human brains are working and that did not even change in times of instant availability.
Learning needs time, pauses, rehearsals and not giving up on errors/failures. If you are stuck, go out for a walk (optional: talk to other people, do something else) and come back. Take your time!
Why do people struggle on tasks like installing an OS or setting up a server even if they are doing it not for the first time?
These are tasks most of us are not doing frequently enough so the needed rehearsals are missing for a solid learning. How to come over this?
What helps a lot is writing down some kind of documentation of what you have done so far. Write down successful steps and how you solved problems. This is handy when you do not remember any more how you have solved a problem in the past. Using local wikis or content management software for this is a good way to go. These are the instructions some expect that others would write for them.
It took me quite some time writing this. Hopefully it is of use for some of us.
and often come across instructions which I don't understand. I am in awe of the depth of knowledge of many of the posters on this forum.