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At the Command Line
Welcome
Does the thought of typing commands into a terminal window or a CMD Command Prompt window transport you back to the days of clacking typewriters, dings, and whir-clunks of returning carriages? If it does, I think that's OK. There's no reason to make more of the lowly command line than there really is to it – no need to wax poetic about something as mundane as a flashing cursor and an empty black box on your screen. I, myself, used to scoff at the old school command-line nerds who shunned graphical interfaces and embraced their anachronistic black-and-white terminals that looked like something out of the technology dark ages. I still scoff at them, because that's who I am. But, I've also secretly become one with the terminal universe. I type faster than I talk, and I've grown weary of the scraping sound that my optical mouse makes on my desktop. Yes, isolation has driven me a little buggy, but it's made me appreciate my keyboard more.
Don't misunderstand me. I didn't just recently discover the command line. I've used it for many years, but I've found a renewed interest in all things command line, and not just in Linux either. I've explored the command line on my Mac computers and have rekindled my love of PowerShell and batch files. Yes, I'm a cross-platform weirdo. I like to play in all the sandboxes at once. I'd forgotten how much I loved PowerShell, and I'd forgotten that it doesn't work like any other scripting language that I've ever used. Often frustrating but always enlightening, command-line tools keep me technically sharp and focused.
Command-line automation with scripts is fun. I like setting and forgetting a task that just takes care of me in the background with no clicking, no typing, and no remembering. Believe it or not, I still use vi on Linux and Mac systems and notepad on Windows. Well, if you're going to slip back into yesterday, you have to use contemporary tools. I mean, you wouldn't jump into your time machine, set the dial for
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