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GameShell: A game to learn or teach the Unix shell

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Re: GameShell: A game to learn or teach the Unix shell

#11

Post by agentwiggles »

Annatar wrote: post #3

Maybe before starting to teach others, you should teach yourself how to cleanly package your software into OS packages, instead of peddling around MS-DOS style shell scripts with a .sh extension. Didn't anybody teach you that UNIX-like operating systems purposely do not use extensions, in order to abstract the implementation language of the executable from the user? How the hell are you going to properly teach others…

Thank goodness that all the many people I've learned from over my life didn't have to meet some arbitrary gold standard of knowledge before they were allowed to teach me! Hardly anyone could have ever taught me anything by this standard.

Similarly, thank goodness I've had the opportunity to expand and solidify my own knowledge by teaching people things I knew, even if I wasn't sure of all the details. I can't count the number of times I've had to stop mid-explanation and say "wait a second, that thing I just said doesn't really make sense. Let's take a deeper look and figure it out together."

Re: GameShell: A game to learn or teach the Unix shell

#13

Post by havblue »

feralfoo wrote: post #5
Annatar wrote: post #3

Maybe before starting to teach others, you should teach yourself how to cleanly package your software into OS packages, instead of peddling around MS-DOS style shell scripts with a .sh extension. Didn't anybody teach you that UNIX-like operating systems purposely do not use extensions, in order to abstract the implementation language of the executable from the user? How the hell are you going to properly teach others…

that's a pretty toxic attitude you have there...

I read the post with a Christopher Lee villain voice which made it entertaining.

Re: GameShell: A game to learn or teach the Unix shell

#15

Post by Annatar »

silviot wrote: post #6
Annatar wrote: post #3

Maybe before starting to teach others, you should teach yourself how to cleanly package your software into OS packages, instead of peddling around MS-DOS style shell scripts with a .sh extension. Didn't anybody teach you that UNIX-like operating systems purposely do not use extensions, in order to abstract the implementation language of the executable from the user? How the hell are you going to properly teach others…

I (25 years working with GNU/Linux) usually name my bash scripts `something.sh`. I think it's debatable wether it's always good or bad, and when specifically it can be a good idea to leave out the `.sh`. Also, it doesn't look like you looked into the game and came out with some conclusions. It looks more like you superficially had a look, you had a thougt and rushed to comment here about what you believe is a deadly…

No post body was provided.

Re: GameShell: A game to learn or teach the Unix shell

#16

Post by Annatar »

arky527 wrote: post #10
Annatar wrote: post #3

Maybe before starting to teach others, you should teach yourself how to cleanly package your software into OS packages, instead of peddling around MS-DOS style shell scripts with a .sh extension. Didn't anybody teach you that UNIX-like operating systems purposely do not use extensions, in order to abstract the implementation language of the executable from the user? How the hell are you going to properly teach others…

I find the use of a 'sh' file suffix a useful convention to follow in helping identifying what is an isn't a shell script on my local machine

You are not supposed to "identify" anything on UNIX-like operating systems; that is what the file(1) command is for, specifically, especially so since the entire concept of UNIX is that everything is a stream of bytes.

Attempting to manually manage files in this way defeats the purpose of the OS abstracting it away for the user; and the users of your executable should not have to care what your executable is written in because you grew up on a PC-bucket whose operating system stems from CP/M -> MS-DOS!

Re: GameShell: A game to learn or teach the Unix shell

#18

Post by JadoJodo »

Annatar wrote: post #3

Maybe before starting to teach others, you should teach yourself how to cleanly package your software into OS packages, instead of peddling around MS-DOS style shell scripts with a .sh extension. Didn't anybody teach you that UNIX-like operating systems purposely do not use extensions, in order to abstract the implementation language of the executable from the user? How the hell are you going to properly teach others…

> boy does this make me mad.

I'm not sure that I can add much beyond what's already been said in reply, but I do want to say:

If something this (arguably) trivial does, truly, make you mad, I would encourage you to reflect on _why_ and perhaps talk it over with a friend or colleague.

Re: GameShell: A game to learn or teach the Unix shell

#19

Post by agentwiggles »

kulikalov wrote: post #12

I saw many games trying to teach programming, but never heard of any of them gaining significant popularity. I wonder why? I guess "play games instead of reading books" idea attracts audience with low motivation?

> I guess "play games instead of reading books" idea attracts audience with low motivation?

This seems a little uncharitable in its premise to me. I've never had all that much success learning from programming books, and the success I've had seemed to happen mostly when I would take the examples and run them and pull them apart and break them and fix them (etc, etc, etc).

From the other side, well designed games are remarkable in their ability to teach concepts to a player (even if, in the general case, they're not concepts with applicability outside the game).

It seems obvious to me that some kind of interactivity is really helpful in learning. Not too much of a stretch from there to guess that the best form of programming education might be some kind of game/book hybrid.

Re: GameShell: A game to learn or teach the Unix shell

#20

Post by mninm »

Back in the 90's I remember my family got a new Compaq (I think) PC. On it it came preloaded with this great dos tutorial that was essentially a fake terminal that would walk the user through DOS commands letting them try various things in a safe environment and let them see the effects.

It was definitely effective in teaching my young self the basics of DOS and was a big step on my path to becoming proficient with a computer.

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