I think of discoverability as as how easy it is to discover and
rediscover things.
Like rediscover commands you forgot the name of. Like "what was the
command to create a database?", just type pg_ and press tab and see
whats there.
The LWN article is now unlocked to all readers, not just paying
subscribers. It have many comments which might bring value to this
discussion.
https://lwn.net/Articles/784508/
On Fri, Apr 12, 2019 at 3:37 PM Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se> wrote:
>
> On Friday, April 12, 2019 3:20 PM, Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:
>
> > On 2019-Apr-12, Daniel Gustafsson wrote:
> >
> > > There are many good reasons for the changes proposed in this thread, but I'm
> > > not sure if discoverability is one. Relying on autocompleting a filename to
> > > figure out existing tooling for database maintenance and DBA type operations
> > > seems like a fragile usecase.
> > > If commandline discoverability is of importance, providing a summary of the
> > > tools in "man postgresql" seems like a better option.
> >
> > The first comment in the LWN article:
> > "It's broken and obviously a bad idea but we've been doing it for so long we
> > shouldn't attempt to fix it"
> >
> > IMO the future is longer than the past, and has more users, so let's do
> > it right instead of perpetuating the mistakes.
> >
> > ... unless you think PostgreSQL is going to become irrelevant before
> > 2050.
>
> Not at all, and as I said there are many good reasons for doing this. I just
> don't think "discoverability" is the driver, since I consider that a different
> thing from ease of use and avoid confusion with system tools etc (my reading of
> that word is "finding something new", not "how did I spell that tool again").
>
> cheers ./daniel