Unix’s man pages, universally feared yet indispensable, started as an unintended publishing project. Early Bell Labs engineers dreaded documenting their work, often leaving terse placeholders or vague ramblings for commands they figured no sane person would ever run anyway. But somehow, these rough scribbles became canonical scripture. Over the decades, man pages accumulated into an accidental opus of cryptic incantations and deadpan humor. Today, admins everywhere habitually type man commands knowing full well they’ll emerge confused, frustrated, and no wiser—but secretly loving every second of that masochistic ritual.
