Unix is my IDE

by marcuskaz • 9 years ago

34 2 9 years ago

Koshkin• 9 years ago

tl;dr: fzf ftw

xelxebar• 9 years ago

This sentiment is close to my heart. I love the command line and only grudgingly use a browser when necessary. The tried and true Unix userspace is truly a joy to use.

However, it takes a significant amount of time to bootstrap oneself into general cli productivity. This is why I find it hard to encourage beginners to use more cli tooling. For man pages to be useful, you have to have a base of general familiarity with your os and cli conventions. Then we also have info pages and --help/-h flags or 'help' subcommands. Every tool has it's quirks, and we also have the differences bewteen various implementations.

Not to mention we have all the choices of various shells: bash, csh, ksh, zsh, fish, etc.

I'm comfortable enough with all this that I kind of enjoy the development history that's fossilized in all these complexities. However, it's a ridiculous barrier to entry. I remember installing Mandrake Linux on my first laptop at age 10 or so and getting throw a command line. I remember typing in the command 'help' and feeling way more confused with what came out.

Anyway, I love the command line but just wish it was easier to share that love with more people.

Unix is my IDE

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