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Become Shell Literate

drewdevault.com

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Re: Become Shell Literate

#101

Post by strulovich »

Piping and shell commands are powerful, but generally a bad experience. You have to plan your command, try to run it and understand how all the piping steps work. If you get it wrong, it’s an annoying experience.

As an alternative, try Sublime with multiple selection (or other editors). With multiple selection skills you can transform your lines in a WYSIWYG interactive format which is much easier to work with for me.

(To use it well you need to know the following shortcuts: split selection to lines, select next, and the alt+arrows jumps to next/previous word)

This won’t mean you don’t need to learn how to use shells, but is still pretty fun to use.

Re: Become Shell Literate

#102

Post by andi999 »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #92
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.

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.

You know nothing..the vhdl to lut transformation (and the content of the bitfile) are totally locked trade secrets.

Re: Become Shell Literate

#103

Post by IggleSniggle »

jeddy3 wrote: post #71
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 difference is like using a hammer vs using a nail gun. I feel like this metaphor falls short. The IDE, IMHO, is more like a multi-tool with pre-chosen use cases, but everything fits together nicely. Using the shell is more like choosing the exact tools for the job, and maybe connecting them together in a make-shift fashion.

Yup, like having a 9-in-one painter's tool vs having those 9 tools individually in a toolbox.

Usually, its super convenient to have all those tools integrated because you can scrape some paint and pound a nail and pull a nail all right then and there with needing to do any swapping out or hunting for the right tool.

But the instant you want to be able to hold a bolt in place with the wrench function while simultaneously using the hammer function, you're shit out of luck. The painter's tool, on its own, can't be de-composed to do those things simultaneously. Plus, it's not as good at being a general purpose hammer or a general purpose wrench. But in the context of the tool, you don't really need a full fledged hammer or wrench. Having a single small tool you can hold in one hand is usually more pragmatic, even if less versatile.

Probably still gonna want the toolbox to be available for when you need it, though.

Re: Become Shell Literate

#104

Post by j1elo »

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…

> 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.

Know any C/C++ IDE that would do this? I transitioned from Qt Creator to VSCode and none of those have helped me with this cool nicety you mention.

EDIT: I should add that for me, exploring foreign code bases has been hugely improved since I discovered Sourcetrail, so I'd suggest having a look at it to anyone interested in code exploration tools: https://www.sourcetrail.com/

Re: Become Shell Literate

#105

Post by teeray »

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…

> 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.

I do this in stock vim using ctags files. You can generate them with anything, though “exuberant ctags” is very popular. Ctrl+] when over an identifier jumps to its definition, and there’s a tag stack to jump backwards similarly (you can also use the jump list). This too, is instant. It’s also an essential feature of the help system in vim for navigating cross-references.

There’s also other robust IDE-like features built-in. Syntax-aware code folding (with adjustable fold levels, see ‘folding’), compiler integration so that it’ll highlight where compilation errors occurred (see :make, makeprg, errorfmt) and so forth. Not saying your life won’t be better without some plugins, but stock vim is quite a bit more powerful than having to shell out and grep.

Re: Become Shell Literate

#107

Post by andi999 »

combatentropy wrote: post #63
jancsika wrote: post #18

I can just never get past the arg/flag inconsistency/complexity across commands. Perhaps if the docs started with a simple example of what has been seen over time to be the most common incantation for each command it might be tolerable. But as it is, I spend more time dealing with idiosyncracies of a command than I do expressively piping stuff. Perhaps if Rust had five mutually incompatible borrow-checkers which get…

You're right. I often think the man page should begin with a few examples, then launch into the neverending list of options. That is no way to learn. In foreign language 101, they start you off with a small group of examples. "Como estas?" "Muy bien. Y tu?" Afterward, they explain the rules of the language (this is a noun, this is a verb, this is how you conjugate for first-person singular, etc.). In fact, this is ho…

In my hazy memory, the examples were somehow all about not the use case I was interested in.

Re: Become Shell Literate

#108

Post by didericis »

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…

Another book recommendation: "Elements of Computing Systems" by Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken.

It doesn't go all the way down to the physics of semiconductors, but it goes down to logic gates and all the way up to tetris (there's a related course/website called nand to tetris: https://www.nand2tetris.org/)

If you want to go further down, check out Jeri Ellsworth's old videos where she built a transistor at home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_znRopGtbE

Re: Become Shell Literate

#109

Post by oblio »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #103
jeddy3 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The difference is like using a hammer vs using a nail gun. I feel like this metaphor falls short. The IDE, IMHO, is more like a multi-tool with pre-chosen use cases, but everything fits together nicely. Using the shell is more like choosing the exact tools for the job, and maybe connecting them together in a make-shift fashion.

Yup, like having a 9-in-one painter's tool vs having those 9 tools individually in a toolbox. Usually, its super convenient to have all those tools integrated because you can scrape some paint and pound a nail and pull a nail all right then and there with needing to do any swapping out or hunting for the right tool. But the instant you want to be able to hold a bolt in place with the wrench function while simultaneou…

How do you refactor, say, Java or C# or Typescript with Vim?

Re: Become Shell Literate

#110

Post by divbzero »

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…

Agreed. IDEs were how I was taught in class, but discovering shell tooling on my own removed the magic and made programming a transparent process.
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