Ask HN: How can a intermediate-beginner learn Unix/Linux and programming?

I would agree with this, but this is underspecified. A couple of examples:

When I was in college, a kid came to our * Nix User Group having fscked up his Ubuntu install by, I kid you not, `cd /; sudo rm -rf * `. He wanted help fixing it.

Another kid who was quite a bit smarter learned about fork bombs and ran one on a shared CS Linux server. It was offline for a few days. When it came back, `who` informed us that the sysadmin spent quite a bit of time running `man limits.conf`. (After graduating, I learned I was able to still login to that server using my SSH key, despite my account being deactivated in LDAP.)

It's a bit like Murphy's Law: anything that can be done on a * Nix machine will be done by a learner given sufficient time.

Grab The Linux Programming Interface and a good C textbook. Rely less on the textbook and more on the readings and exercises in TLPI.

It's just easier to get going with programming stuff on linux (other than .net)

Need python? Ruby? docker? A different compiler or a specific library? They're just an apt-get install away. It just feels more natural and integrated.

Windows has always been an odd duck for programming on.

There's no such thing as Linux programming without C. You will have to deal with it eventually regardless of how many wrappers Python etc. puts on top of it.

I learned SunOS (and later Linux and HP-UX) by full immersion with a non-root account on a multiuser server. It was non-graphical, though I was able to tunnel X over SSH across the Internet and actually have an almost usable desktop.

I was learning C programming at the time, so beyond dealing with bizarre things like my program crashing due to "segmentation fault"s, I was trying to understand what was going on. The first time I opened vi, I couldn't figure out how to get out. Once I did, I used `:sav %` followed by `:q` for longer than I care to admit.

If I had to recommend anything to someone just learning, I'd recommend learning these commands:

cd ls touch rm # but be careful! ps head tail nano who whoami man apropos # this is technically man less

These will help you do a lot of what you need to do on Linux about as well as you can do similar things on Windows. Once you've mastered those commands, learn about piping `|`, grouping `{ foo; bar; }` and sub-shells `$(foo)`. Learning about variables `$foo`

Then read up on:

grep sed cut find awk # really just `awk '{ print $2 }'` xargs env export test # [ foo ] source # . foo crontab top # or even better `htop` shell control flow

When you're done with that, learn

vim # `vimtutor` can help emacs

After that, there's tons of other tools you'll pick up as needed:

dd df du fsck and a bunch of other system-related tools

You'll learn a ton as you move along.

Just remember that for the most part, each tool solves approximately one problem, and the complex behavior comes from chaining tools together. Chaining mostly involves `|`. Once you see that at work, you probably won't want to go back to the crutch of point-click-drag.

Best of luck!