[penguicon-general] A couple of thoughts about programming

[Matt Arnold]

On 4/29/07, Craig <craig at decafbad.net> wrote:
> Greg wrote:
> > Here's an idea regarding the CLI:  A panel discussing the relevance of
> > using the CLI for the avg. user.  With all the GUI apps and tools
> > about, why should the avg. user care about the command line...or not?
>
> That's what I was thinking of, but more structured. Panel discussions
> about technical topics like the CLI can rathole really quickly. If
> you're introducing it, I think it should be more instructor/student. The
> sub-title of the presentation / talk I was planning in my head was
> "Getting a clue about the CLI: Having 30+ years of UNIX development
> experience work for you".

I'd like to be at this event. One or two people have attempted to
explain to me why they use the command line, and couldn't seem to find
the words. I have been told it's not a throwback to my experiences
with DOS, but no one has provided specific examples to me yet, and
this class could do so.

I strongly agree a multi-participant discussion panel would probably
elevate to discussion on the level of the presenters rather than on
the level of the newbie learner.  Multiple experts would get a little
bored otherwise. A class taught by a single instructor is ideal for
this case, preferably in the computer lounge where students can open a
terminal and say "hey, I typed that gibberish but nothing happened"
and the instructor can say "good, that means success."

Start by telling the class "do NOT go through the usr/bin directory
clicking all the executables to see what they do!" I did that once. It
was bad.

It's important that the instructor actually have an answer to the
question as Greg phrased it:  "With all the GUI apps and tools about,
why should the average user care about the command line...or not?" The
class would need to show us something cool we can do with the command
line that doesn't require unreasonable investment in memorization. For
instance, I've often made massive formulaic changes to a text file or
table by hand, and someone would later say it should have been
automated in the command line. Also, from what I understand, there is
a command called grep which is a search. That would be pretty useful.

-Matt