get you a shell

        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||

Last fall, I forgot my laptop at work, but I wanted to write something.

And then I remembered that I had a Raspberry Pi sitting around.

So I set it up and started writing things on it.

And I got to thinking: This is just a stupid Linux computer without any graphics.

There’s nothing here but the command line and some programs that do stuff to plain text files.

And this is how I am happiest as a writer.

Not as a programmer, or a clever unix dork, but as a writer.

$ cowthink I should write a book about this.
 ___________________________________
( I should write a book about this. )
 -----------------------------------
        o   ^__^
         o  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||

So here’s my thesis:

Unix is for normal humans.

Wizards are cool and all, but most of us aren’t wizards.

Most of us are just bumbling through life.

A lot of us like to make stuff anyway.

Unix is for that.

…except what classical Unix really looks like is this:

And a lot of the time, modern Unix-like systems look like this:

…which isn’t actually that unfamiliar, right?

At SparkFun, we do a lot of stuff over serial.
Once upon a time, most of the interfaces to Really Serious Computers – the ones at universities and in government – worked like debugging Arduino code over a serial port.
The computer prints stuff, you type stuff to the computer, the computer prints stuff. It’s just text in a box.
Even once we got PCs in our houses, a lot of the interfaces shared this heritage. Remember DOS? Ever have to fire up cmd.exe on Windows?

In 2014, the Serious way you interact with Serious Computers – the ones that most of the internet runs on – is still through a text terminal.

If you stop by my desk at work, my screen probably looks like this:

But we’re not here to talk about Serious Computers.

We’re here to talk about how the command line is for normal human beings.

YOU ARE STANDING AT THE END OF A ROAD BEFORE A SMALL BRICK BUILDING.
AROUND YOU IS A FOREST.  A SMALL STREAM FLOWS OUT OF THE BUILDING AND
DOWN A GULLY.

> GO EAST

YOU ARE INSIDE A BUILDING, A WELL HOUSE FOR A LARGE SPRING.

THERE ARE SOME KEYS ON THE GROUND HERE.

THERE IS A SHINY BRASS LAMP NEARBY.

THERE IS FOOD HERE.

THERE IS A BOTTLE OF WATER HERE.

Now is where Brennen goes to the shell and fumbles around in front of an audience.

So that’s the shell. Want a shell?

I will give you a shell right now. Talk to me.

https://p1k3.com/userland-book/

http://squiggle.city/

Unix is for normal humans.

cool story bro

wtf is unix?