curl cheat.sh — get an instant answer to any question on (almost) any programming language from the command line

tldr

do curl cht.sh/go/execute+external+program to see how to execute external program in go

And this question: why I actually should I start the browser, and the browser has to downloads tons of JS, CSS and HTML, render them thereafter, only to show me some small output,
some small text, number or even some plot. Why can't I do a trivial query from the command line
and instantly get what I want?

I decided to create some service that will work as I think such a service should work.
And that is how wttr.in was created.

Nowadays you probably know, how to check the weather from the command line, but if not:

curl wttr.in

or

curl wttr.in/Paris

(curl wetter in Paris if you want to know the weather in Paris)

After that several other services were created (the point was to check how good the console
can solve the task, so I tried to create services providing information
of various nature: text, numbers, plots, pseudo graphic etc.):

curl rate.sx/btc # to check exchange rate of any (crypto)currency
curl qrenco.de/google.com # to QRenco.de any text

And now last but not least, the gem in this collection: cheat.sh.

The original idea behind the service was just to deliver a various UNIX/Linux command line cheat sheets via curl. There are several beautiful community driven cheat sheet repositories such as tldr, but the problem is that to use them you have to install them first, and it is quite often that you have no time for it, you just want to quickly check some cheat sheet.

With cheat.sh you don't need to install anything, just do:

curl cheat.sh/tar (or whatever)

you will get a cheat sheet for this command (if such cheat sheet exists inf one of the most popular community-driven cheat sheet repositories; but it surely does).

But then I thought: why actually show only existing cheat sheets? Why not generate cheat sheets or better to say on the fly? And that is how the next major update of cheat.sh was created.

Now you can simply do:

curl cht.sh/python/copy+files
curl cht.sh/go/execute+external+program
curl cht.sh/js/async+file+read

or even

curl cht.sh/python/копировать+файл
curl cht.sh/ruby/Datei+löschen
curl cht.sh/lua/复制文件

and get your question answered
(cht.sh is an alias for cheat.sh).

And it does not matter what language have you used to ask the question. To be short, all pairs (human language => programming language) are supported.

One very important major advantage of console oriented interfaces is that they are easily
programmable and can be easily integrated with various systems.
For example, Vim and Emacs plugins were created by means of that you can
query the service directly from the editor so that you can just write your
questions in the buffer and convert them in code with a keystroke.

The service is of course far from the perfection,
there are plenty of things to be fixed and to be implemented,
but now you can see its contours and see the contours of this approach,
console oriented services.

The service (as well as the other mentioned above services) is opensource, its code is available here:
https://github.com/chubin/cheat.sh

What do you think about this service?
What do you think about this approach?
Have you already heard about these services before?
Have you used them?
If yes, what do you like about them and what are you missing?

Twitter: Julia Evans @b0rk