On Sun, Jun 16, 2024 at 2:50 PM Greg A. Woods <woods@robohack.ca> wrote:

> In the "Unix world" everyone learns shell scripting, some better than
> others of course, and some hate it at the same time too, but I would say
> from my experience it's a given.  You either learn shell scripting or
> you are "just a user" (even if you also write application code).
>
Side story - I think you can tell a lot about a person by what is on their
bookshelf at work and what books they have read.

A few years ago, I discovered this same flaw in using UNIX (Linux) well
with some of the new hires (from really good schools, too), and it was
worse because they often had never seen the true Bourne shell (nor knew
much/anything about Algol, much less A68).  Many thought "bash" was the
UNIX shell because they never knew better (chuckle).   I realized it was a
huge hole in their education, so I got my admin to order each copies of
K&R2 and UPE for their desks.   I said I expected them to do the
exercises in them as part of their "training." I could usually tell a lot
about each person by the questions they asked during that period. Many
often griped about having to learn to use ed and nroff.  I think those that
were already EMACS folks thought I was a little bonkers but my comment was
that you'll understand the other tools better/be a lot more effective with
the shell in particular. Many had seen Latex, so the >>idea<< of a document
compiler was not always completely foreign.  But they crawled through each
book.

But it was interesting when it was done. To a person, they all said they
were much better with the UNIX tool kit after UPE, and because they
actually read K&R2, they often learned a few things about C they never
realized.  Once they "graduated" also I gave them a copy of APUE, if they
were doing networking stuff, UNP too.  Most would start doing the APUE and
UNP problems also as I would get some of them coming to my office with
questions, but I never said they had to do them.

Clem
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