It is pure coincidence that I decided to write a post about Unix training on the anniversary of a post about Being a geek.
It makes a nice bookend, though, since I'm going to be doing this training for work, and I wrote the previous post just before I started my current job.
I work at a very Unix shop; I spend my whole day on Unix machines (Alphas and Suns, mostly). I was fortunate to have Linux experience before I started; it especially helped that I was comfortable with vi. (vi usage is mandatory; everyone has to learn it.) Most of my colleagues are not so lucky and have to figure it all out while they're just trying to get their work done.
Admittedly I have also learned a lot about Unix utilities in the last couple of years. I did not know about cut or sort before I started, and now I use them all the time. I do everything I can on the command line; I find it faster and easier that way. I assumed that my colleagues would also pick up new tools as they went along, but recently a co-worker told me I don't know how to use
! I was astonished. If she didn't feel she understood cut; I just copy from your callscut, maybe others didn't either.
So now I am planning a small Unix training series. To start off, I'll do three sessions: basic utilities, intermediate utilities, and shell scripting. I am thinking about what I want to cover and especially how I am going to cover it. This whole exercise will be entirely pointless if I only succeed in scaring people off. I want to show people tools that can make their lives easier, not make them learn something new and complicated.
I want to give them the hacker mentality of always looking for a better, easier way to accomplish a task. I want them to make the computer work for them.
It will be at least a month before I give the first part of my training, and that's just as well. I will need the time to prepare.
3M&aL says:
I took Unix in college. For a day. I walked in and went huuuuuuuuh and then at the end of class I marched myself over to the registrar and dropped out and signed up for Regulatory Law instead and that is how I found myself in my current pickle and that is why all the children everywhere should definitely all take Unix. The end.
Jeff says:
Huh. A couple of friends in High School had started using this "Linux" thing and I had a healthy hatred of Win95 and MacOS7/8 at the time. I borrowed a couple books on it and discovered it really was the best thing ever. A week after I installed it [Linux], I stopped using Windows and never looked back. That was almost exactly nine years ago.
So, yes, every child everywhere should learn Unix. I did say it was the best thing ever.
Good luck, honey. If you need more obtuse advice guaranteed to scare off your co-workers, you know who to ask. Oh yeah.