I think you missed the point of the article. Chris himself invented a man alternative, called cheat, and he seems to have had a revelation that maybe the man standard is a good one.
Ruby itself has ri and rdoc as man alternatives.
I think the point was that man is a widely accepted "unix way" of doing documentation. Just as Unicorn uses unix sockets to great effect, maybe we should focus on writing good manpages instead of reinventing documentation systems over and over again.
That doesn't mean cheat, ri, rdoc aren't better in various ways, just that publishing documentation via the man standard is a nice way to maintain standardized docs.
Ruby itself has ri and rdoc as man alternatives.
I think the point was that man is a widely accepted "unix way" of doing documentation. Just as Unicorn uses unix sockets to great effect, maybe we should focus on writing good manpages instead of reinventing documentation systems over and over again.
That doesn't mean cheat, ri, rdoc aren't better in various ways, just that publishing documentation via the man standard is a nice way to maintain standardized docs.