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Miguel de Icaza: Learning Unix

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Re: Miguel de Icaza: Learning Unix

#81

Post by robryan »

juiceandjuice wrote: post #19

Are most people not touch typers? I've noticed my boss isn't really a touch typer, despite programming since before I was born, but I always assumed the majority of CS people were.

I don't think that you really have to be, I think it helps less than in regular writing.

Personally my style is very anti touch, using 2 fingers for the majority of letters, which I don't have to look at the keyboard for but I probably take more glances at it that a touch typist. I think though in being proficient in navigating the symbols on the keyboard mostly makes up for the loss in outright English typing speed.

Re: Miguel de Icaza: Learning Unix

#82

Post by rbanffy »

skb_ wrote: post #71
gradstudent wrote: post #62

Does anyone else find it deliciously ironic that, in such a pro-Unix article, Miguel recommends Mavis Beacon? According to Amazon, it's available only for Windows and OSX :p

I'm surprised he didn't recommend gtype, it's probably the best and fastest way to learn how to type in that there are no unnecessary graphics and you need not ever touch a mouse. Fits the Unix approach much better imo.

apt-get install gtype didn't work ;-) Googling for it led to a couple false hints, dead-ends and lots of information about viruses (not the computer kind)

Re: Miguel de Icaza: Learning Unix

#83

Post by rbanffy »

gcb wrote: post #33

learn unix ... use midnight commander. lolwat?

Which is rather interesting because, in an interview a couple weeks back, he said he wrote mc because he thought manipulating files through the shell was painful (or something to that effect) and he wanted something like Norton Commander for it.

http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail5021.html

Re: Miguel de Icaza: Learning Unix

#85

Post by mmavnn »

sherr wrote: post #24
andrewhare wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He sounded pretty serious to me. Do you have a better suggestion? The Mavis Beacon software does a perfectly fine job at teaching touch-typing.

Klavaro Touch Typing Tutor is pretty good - Linux and OSX. http://klavaro.sourceforge.net/en/

Just tried it: nicely done especially as I use a slightly customised UK Dvorak keyboard.

Re: Miguel de Icaza: Learning Unix

#86

Post by davidw »

chalst wrote: post #54
pointyhat wrote: post #30

Without starting a religious war, it's essential to learn the basics of vi for it is ubiquitous on all UNIX variants. Even if you use emacs, it's essential knowledge.

ed/ex is well worth learning. The other vi commands are less so, unless you prefer to use vim as your main editor. If you are a vim power user, finding yourself using traditional BSD vi is likely to be an unpleasant experience, making the vim is great because vi is installed everywhere weak as an argument.

(From http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed.msg.html )

“Ed is the standard text editor.”

Let's look at a typical novice's session with the mighty ed:

    golem$ ed

    ?
    help
    ?
    ?
    ?
    quit
    ?
    exit
    ?
    bye
    ?
    hello?
    ?
    eat flaming death
    ?
    ^C
    ?
    ^C
    ?
    ^D
    ?
---

Note the consistent user interface and error reportage. Ed is generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm the novice with verbosity.

Re: Miguel de Icaza: Learning Unix

#87

Post by super_mario »

sixtofour wrote: post #47
josteink wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? vi and its derivates has their own (weird) usage-convention which you will find in no other software anywhere on the planet. Learning them gives you very few transferable skills. Any "Unixy" thing you have around these days will have more resources than most computes did in the mid 90s, and the need for a "lightweight" editor like vi is much, much smaller now than it was back then. Even my Buffalo router has nan…

"Why? vi and its derivates has their own (weird) usage-convention which you will find in no other software anywhere on the planet. Learning them gives you very few transferable skills." Arrgghhh! man readline, and search (/) for inputrc. ANY app that uses readline can be set to use vi OR emacs keystrokes and history, by setting an entry in .inputrc. If you use either editor regularly this will set your command line s…

And even more, there is rlwrap (i.e. readline wrap) command line utility that wrangles the badly behaved tools and allows you to use VI editing mode with almost anything (like cat command etc).

Re: Miguel de Icaza: Learning Unix

#88

Post by FraaJad »

rbanffy wrote: post #82
skb_ wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised he didn't recommend gtype, it's probably the best and fastest way to learn how to type in that there are no unnecessary graphics and you need not ever touch a mouse. Fits the Unix approach much better imo.

apt-get install gtype didn't work ;-) Googling for it led to a couple false hints, dead-ends and lots of information about viruses (not the computer kind)

gtypist -- http://www.gnu.org/s/gtypist/

Re: Miguel de Icaza: Learning Unix

#89

Post by super_mario »

chalst wrote: post #54
pointyhat wrote: post #30

Without starting a religious war, it's essential to learn the basics of vi for it is ubiquitous on all UNIX variants. Even if you use emacs, it's essential knowledge.

ed/ex is well worth learning. The other vi commands are less so, unless you prefer to use vim as your main editor. If you are a vim power user, finding yourself using traditional BSD vi is likely to be an unpleasant experience, making the vim is great because vi is installed everywhere weak as an argument.

Not really. VIM has vi as subset, and plain vanilla vi is still quite powerful text editor. It doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles, and I would not choose to use it as the primary editor for all tasks, but if I'm on a system where I have to edit something using plain vi, I won't have a hard time doing it and doing it fast.

Re: Miguel de Icaza: Learning Unix

#90

Post by martianpenguin »

foob wrote: post #8

I would like to add the Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide ( http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/ ) as an incredible resource. It's obviously geared towards scripting but most of what it teaches is extremely useful for working in an interactive shell as well. I had been using linux and bash for years before I read it and I still picked up quite a bit when I finally got around to working through it.

he couldn't get an affiliate link for that...
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