Bash(ful) Thoughts

Real Talk

In my humble opinion, I think a developer who is starting out is best served by learning bash scripting first before utilizing any tools or GUIs that make whatever task you are trying to accomplish "easier". My rationale for this is simple, bash scripts force developers to understand "what's under the hood", so to speak. It's important to understand how things work and bash scripts are perhaps the lowest level that makes sense to understand.

We essentially build UIs on top of scripts that automate processes for us. A button click invokes a line, or several, of code that operates within a specific context. Bash scripts force you to understand what context you're in at all times and when you finally git gud at bash, you can figure out how to make it more seamless and honestly, more efficient and faster than a lot of GUIs. That's just my opinion, take it or leave it.

git

Just figure out how to do git stuff with bash, especially if you are not gauranteed a consistent environment to develop in, knowing bash can help alleviate learning a new software or platform. It's also a shortcut in case the software itself is buggy or not cooperating.