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Ask HN: how did you learn the command line?

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Re: Ask HN: how did you learn the command line?

#11

Post by picomancer »

Once upon a time (c. 1990-1997), most programs were written for DOS, and some amount of command line knowledge was required to run them.

Installers were typically batch files (the DOS equivalent of shell scripts), which was really cool: You could see exactly what they were doing [1], and you could improve your command-line-fu by seeing the techniques people used [2].

[1] Usually it was just copying the application files from directory to directory. Nowadays installers generally muck with the Registry, C:\Progra~1 [3], C:\Users\Applic~1 [3], the Desktop (who knows where that is), the Start Menu, and the Windows equivalent of /etc/init.d (I remember there are several of them, and your system will get slower...and...slow...er...if you don't clean them out regularly)

[2] Like environment variables or @ECHO OFF.

[3] Spaces in filenames need to die. Whenever possible I use the 8-character names Windows generates for backwards compatibility with DOS.

Re: Ask HN: how did you learn the command line?

#15

Post by antm »

Peepcode has a great set of quality, affordable, screencasts. I went through them both and they helped a ton.

https://peepcode.com/products/meet-the-command-line

https://peepcode.com/products/advanced-command-line

Experimentation is another good option, and goes a long way, but it can be scary. If you're at all worried about doing permanent damage, install a virtual machine (i.e. VirtualBox + the server version of Ubuntu or whatever OS you want). That way you can experiment away without fear of doing permanent damage. If it happens just trash the the VM and start again.

Re: Ask HN: how did you learn the command line?

#17

Post by pajju »

The best way to learn is by doing and using it often.

Don't read, use it often!

There must be a strong reason to learn, and don't just learn for the sake of learning!

I have been using Linux daily, its around 5+ yrs. I play around with numerous VPS remote boxes and still I'm learning, but everyday getting better at it.

This way, it should only get better and better over time! The more you use in your daily workflows, the more you appreciate and understand the internals too.

And there are no other shortcuts to learn command line tools. Courses or short tutorials won't help much.

You have to involve command line tools in your daily workflow's. Its a long term process, so keep learning, improving and don't ever stop!

Re: Ask HN: how did you learn the command line?

#18

Post by IvyMike »

I was on a gigantic Sequent machine with hundreds of users at UIUC.

When I got my account, I given a user agreement paper with rules and regulations that, at the very bottom, had a dozen or so commands on it. There were some very terse and cryptic descriptions. ("cd: change directory; man: read a manual page; ps: print running processes; grep: search for a string")

Eventually I bootstrapped my way up to doing "ps -augx" to see what other people were running. Then I would try whatever they were doing.

Re: Ask HN: how did you learn the command line?

#20

Post by chacham15 »

I dont know about other people, but I learned based upon need. I needed to be able to manage files so I learned cd,mv,cp,ls. Then I needed to write the output to files so I learned about piping and the redirect operator. Then I needed to search through the output so I learned grep, etc.
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