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Become Shell Literate

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Re: Become Shell Literate

#91

Post by tedunangst »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #81
tutfbhuf wrote: post #4

I wish that shell would be more sane. I don't think that a shell should be a complete programming language. If you need a programming language, then better use one. There is xonsh if you are looking for something like this. I think there should be a better bash with an very clean and consistent interface. Some of the most commonly used utils like awk '{ print $2}', sed, grep, sort, ... should be included out of the b…

Your wish has been granted: awk '{ print $2 }' can be replaced by 'cut -f2'. And all of the commands are part of the set of POSIX command-line utilities having been included on Unix systems since basically forever, with awk (the one true awk) having been introduced only in 1983 or so.

cut doesn't use the same field delimiters as awk.

Re: Become Shell Literate

#92

Post by turbinerneiter »

CodeAndCuffs wrote: post #83
turbinerneiter wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool. Still, a lot of people start out programming with complex IDEs and end up being unable to run their code without the "play" button of their IDE. Starting out, or only ever leaning an IDE is also hiding a lot of things from you. For me, knowing the shell isn't about IDE vs. shell tooling, it's about, whatever you use, be aware and knowledgeable about the foundation and being able to do stuff even if there is no…

Cant we make this argument for any level of abstraction? A lot of people start out with shells and end up being unable to understand how to construct a switch or adder in logic gates. A shell is a great tool but shouldn't be a crutch.

Absolutely true! Ordered an FPGA dev kit last week for this reason.

Perfect world, you know everything.

In reality, you can't and don't need to. Knowing some shell stuff will be useful for most if not all programmers.

Re: Become Shell Literate

#93

Post by diarrhea »

spicyramen wrote: post #85

Our codebase uses tons of shellscripts and Python. Shell has been great for running installations tasks. Recently we added presubmits and added shellcheck utility to check for style and syntax. Any suggestions for adding unit tests for she'll scripts will be great. I'm planning to unify the syntax across the board

Are you using shell for installations, or make? I would think builds/installs/tests are more easily done via make, as opposed to a self-made shell implementation.

Re: Become Shell Literate

#94

Post by IshKebab »

tutfbhuf wrote: post #4

I wish that shell would be more sane. I don't think that a shell should be a complete programming language. If you need a programming language, then better use one. There is xonsh if you are looking for something like this. I think there should be a better bash with an very clean and consistent interface. Some of the most commonly used utils like awk '{ print $2}', sed, grep, sort, ... should be included out of the b…

I agree. There's nushell which looks a lot more sane, so I have hope that we won't be stuck with insane tools from the 80s for the rest of time! Maybe people will stop deifying those old flawed tools too.

Re: Become Shell Literate

#95

Post by IshKebab »

spicyramen wrote: post #85

Our codebase uses tons of shellscripts and Python. Shell has been great for running installations tasks. Recently we added presubmits and added shellcheck utility to check for style and syntax. Any suggestions for adding unit tests for she'll scripts will be great. I'm planning to unify the syntax across the board

Bet you £10 if you try your code from a path containing spaces it doesn't work.

Re: Become Shell Literate

#96

Post by gorgoiler »

gfxgirl wrote: post #29

Someone should write "become IDE literate" as a response to opening of using vim with no extensions and using grep a lot. I've been using editors that are language aware since at least the late 90s. Depending on the language they'll show me all references, take me to the definition or declaration, stack those jumps so as I follow the links I can pop back a level to where I was. All of this is instant. 1000x faster th…

The two worlds of editing general purpose text files, when compared to editing a large amount of a very specific kind of text file, look very similar.

I’ve never seen advocacy for one over the other as a competition. I do plenty of both types of editing, and often edit the same files simultaneously with three different tools.

(Example: Editing notes in Notable, Atom, and vim.)

Re: Become Shell Literate

#97

Post by Jasper_ »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #47
gfxgirl wrote: post #29

Someone should write "become IDE literate" as a response to opening of using vim with no extensions and using grep a lot. I've been using editors that are language aware since at least the late 90s. Depending on the language they'll show me all references, take me to the definition or declaration, stack those jumps so as I follow the links I can pop back a level to where I was. All of this is instant. 1000x faster th…

Cool. Still, a lot of people start out programming with complex IDEs and end up being unable to run their code without the "play" button of their IDE. Starting out, or only ever leaning an IDE is also hiding a lot of things from you. For me, knowing the shell isn't about IDE vs. shell tooling, it's about, whatever you use, be aware and knowledgeable about the foundation and being able to do stuff even if there is no…

Still, a lot of people start out programming with complex compilers and end up being unable to hand-write their assembly code in pure HEX without the "help" of their compiler.

Starting out, or only ever leaning a compiler is also hiding a lot of things from you.

Now, I am familiar with assembly, I live and breathe it honestly, but I don't gatekeep and say "you're not a real programmer unless you've written your own assembler macros". Some people are happy in their IDEs and see no reason to move to the lower-level of abstraction in their tooling. I don't see why we should fault or shame them for that.

Personally, I see shell as a poorly-designed, very error-prone language and I think we should move past it, onto far better tools.

Re: Become Shell Literate

#98

Post by Shared404 »

spijdar wrote: post #88
CodeAndCuffs wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cant we make this argument for any level of abstraction? A lot of people start out with shells and end up being unable to understand how to construct a switch or adder in logic gates. A shell is a great tool but shouldn't be a crutch.

Emotionally, I actually agree with this. I'd love for at least a basic understanding of computers down to boolean logic and the very basics of semiconductors up to the OS level and beyond to be "widely known" by programmers and "computer literate". At the same time, I know that's extremely unreasonable to expect. I guess for the shell and editor, you can argue you ought to understand it stripped of abstractions, sinc…

You may like "The Secret Life of Programs" by Jonathan Steinhart.

It starts at boolean logic and works up to a web browser and then some other stuff.

Edit: It's a high level covering of each topic of course, it does have to fit in a book. It's ~444 pages.

Re: Become Shell Literate

#99

Post by morelisp »

bentcorner wrote: post #44
gfxgirl wrote: post #29

Someone should write "become IDE literate" as a response to opening of using vim with no extensions and using grep a lot. I've been using editors that are language aware since at least the late 90s. Depending on the language they'll show me all references, take me to the definition or declaration, stack those jumps so as I follow the links I can pop back a level to where I was. All of this is instant. 1000x faster th…

I do like my IDE but my one complaint with leaning on it a lot is that it lets you write code that is harder to understand if you don't have that IDE readily available. For example, if you name a member "flag" and you have several types with the same member, your IDE can tell you where this flag is used, so it's not a big deal if you wanted to refactor or are trying to track down a bug. But god help you if you're loo…

A better example might be perpetuating typos (and other less obviously wrong bad names), the number of times I've seen some variant of "setIntercetpor" or "closeDataSteam" or... anything that gets actually typed as "most of the first word plus completion."

Re: Become Shell Literate

#100

Post by mraza007 »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #47
gfxgirl wrote: post #29

Someone should write "become IDE literate" as a response to opening of using vim with no extensions and using grep a lot. I've been using editors that are language aware since at least the late 90s. Depending on the language they'll show me all references, take me to the definition or declaration, stack those jumps so as I follow the links I can pop back a level to where I was. All of this is instant. 1000x faster th…

Cool. Still, a lot of people start out programming with complex IDEs and end up being unable to run their code without the "play" button of their IDE. Starting out, or only ever leaning an IDE is also hiding a lot of things from you. For me, knowing the shell isn't about IDE vs. shell tooling, it's about, whatever you use, be aware and knowledgeable about the foundation and being able to do stuff even if there is no…

I didn’t really started out with IDE I become overwhelmed by using an IDE its just my personal preference but I love using text editor they are very simple and minimal
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