- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
In my experience repetition helped. Not memorization, but more like muscle memory.
Also, ensuring to never copy and paste commands but to type them in manually yourself. It’s hard to enforce this on yourself, but worth it.
I appreciate that this article started with “ways to reduce risk” because that’s an extremely valid concern and tied to why you shouldn’t ever copy and paste. The one time in my early Linux forays where I copied and pasted I wiped the wrong drive. It definitely taught me to always manually type it in and not get too lazy, because what you copied might not match what you want to do exactly.
Also, ensuring to never copy and paste commands but to type them in manually yourself. It’s hard to enforce this on yourself, but worth it.
“Command: sido not found…”
As a fan of german rap this gave me a good chuckle. Thx.
To things that helps no mater your skill level the tab key is your best friend and man pages are great but if those are overwhelming install the package tldr then you can use the command tldr and the command you are trying to run to give you helpful examples of how to use that command.
Also old users don’t remember long commands if we use a command more than once. You save it to your bash alias file to create your own commands.
tldr is great, sometimes you can’t remember the exact syntax for a certain command and just need a quick reminder as well.
Also old users don’t remember long commands if we use a command more than once. You save it to your bash alias file to create your own commands.
A good example for this is docker compose -f when you work alot if compose files ! Having an alias for docker compose -f as
dcf
saves hours a month xD
C:[Enter]
###
Clear instructions on how to do a clearly defined, specific task, in a failsoft manner, faster and easier, which helps them in a project they are doing now.
- making it ✨pretty✨
- using it a bunch
- man pages
- arch wiki
Mastering the command line? A few observations. First, consult and take notes (yes, even seasoned terminal veterans forget syntax.) Secondly, embrace tab completion. It’s your friend, and a surprisingly effective substitute for remembering every single command. Third, the true test: procure a VPS or remote server and exclusively use the command line. No GUI crutches allowed. It’s a digital wilderness, and you’ll learn to navigate it.
Lastly, and this is non-negotiable: keep a terminal window permanently resident on your desktop. Consider it a vital organ, deserving of its space. It’s a constant reminder of the power you wield, and a readily available portal to a world beyond the pretty buttons.
I upvoted this comment multiple times while reading.
On that front: to developers-
Please make sure you include bash completions for your tools
Hehe, I’m doing this all the time now ! 3 years ago when I started my linux/self-hosted server journey with debian: CLI only !
Was difficult at times and had a few breakdowns (most got fixed the next day… Sleep/taking some time off really helps !!!)
One thing I’m still bad at… Is taking notes. Haven’t found a good way take IT notes. And I tried sooo many different approaches…
Breakdowns are inevitable; a good night’s sleep is often the most elegant solution. :) I utilize Zim (for note management) as plain text remains a perfectly serviceable option, imo.
What helps me is to understand what commands acronym means. For instance cp for copy, mkdir for make directory, blkid for block id, ls for list (not too sure about actual meaning for s) and so on!
Nice tips about ctrl+r to search in command history. Was not aware it existed!
‘ls’ is an abbreviation for ‘list’, not an acronym. Like copy -> cp, and the other keystroke saving abbreviations.
pwd for password, man for mansplain, and dd for destroy disk
Hey, the first two don’t sound quite right
works for common flags too, like in
df -h
, the h stands for human readable, I always find myself mumbling “human” while typing that one
Stumbled across a game that teaches the command line as you play it. Seems like a good place to share https://gitlab.com/slackermedia/bashcrawl
personally, writing and saving simple scripts - IE project based learning - is how i got time in the saddle.
Working in a remote environment
Really specific here, but font control.
Us folks with dyslexia in its various expressions have trouble with command line. If you can’t read a specific command, good luck ever getting comfortable with it. You can’t error check yourself, so until you build up memory, you’re kinda screwed if you can’t use the fonts that are available.
Practice I guess. Especially using cli for specific tasks that is done more efficiently on there than the gui.
Moving files using regex for example is useful. Or finding files with specific phrases in them. Stuff like that
For me it was self hosting, aka not having a choice but to learn. I’ll be dead before using remote desktop for that.
Also, self hosting gives you real motivation, because you actually need to do things, carry tasks, not just learning for the sake of it. Your efforts get immediately rewarded with functioning things.
real motivation, because you actually need to do things, carry tasks, not just learning for the sake of it. Your efforts get immediately rewarded with functioning things.
Yes indeed, and that’s true for any challenging skill to hone.
I think just doing it more, and thinking it’s cool to interact more directly. At least that helps me. I do feel bad for dyslexic peiple though, it’s a lot harder for them to use CLI.
Yeah that was it for me. Just keep regular backups and bear in mind that you’ll probably break stuff at first. But once you get the hang of it, it’s like a whole other level of control over your system.
Also I’m not dyslexic but would things like tab completion and aliases help maybe? I sometimes shorten often-used commands with aliases just for convenience (as an example, I use
rsync
a lot, particularly the commandrsync --ignore-existing -rav
which I just shorten tors
to save time) so maybe that could also be used to avoid mis-spelling?Thats a good idea, i have not made any aliases yet. Also remembering all of those aliases is another challenge ha. I keep a text file named commands on my desktop with a whole bunch of commands I forget.
I have some mapped to super simple aliases too like
e1
to reboot,e2
to shutdown etc. I don’t remember why I started doing that, but that way I only have to remember which number does what lol.
I set it so when I hit CTRL-Tilde it drops down from the top of the screen.
Quake-style, baby.
CTRL-tilde or CTRL-backtick?
Yes
Maybe controversial, but the fish shell. I know it’s not strictly bash syntax, but the OOTB features are just so user-friendly. The most helpful features for learning: the autocomplete (with descriptions of subcommands and flags!) and the fuzzy history search.
I write bash scripts all the time, and am significantly more knowledgeable than anyone else on my team (admittedly frontend) because I got comfortable in fish.
I use Fish sometimes, even when I know exactly what I need to type, but just don’t feel like having to type out entire file names.