[Cialug] Tasks for learning shell scripting

[Josh More]

For one-on-one tutoring, toss them one of the books mentioned earlier in the thread and then work with them on ways to automate their personal workflow.  If they use Gnome, work with them to write nautilus scripts or custom session managers.  Work your way up to more complex things like custom startup scripts for specific "daemons" (like every time the machine turns on, launch an irc client as a screen session and connect it to the key channels).

Let them drive the direction.

Avoid the Posix focus.  Let them get the job done as quickly as possible and let them shoot themselves in the foot as quickly as possible.  The harder you make it to learn, the more resistant your mentee will be to learning.  This is why I maintain that Perl is the absolute best first language to learn.  In the shell world, this would be Bash.


-Josh More, CISSP, GIAC-GSLC, GIAC-GCIH, RHCE, NCLP
morej at alliancetechnologies.net
515-245-7701

________________________________________
From: cialug-bounces at cialug.org [cialug-bounces at cialug.org] on behalf of Matthew Nuzum [newz at bearfruit.org]
Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 08:35
To: Central Iowa Linux Users Group
Subject: Re: [Cialug] Tasks for learning shell scripting

On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 7:55 AM, Josh More
<MoreJ at alliancetechnologies.net> wrote:
> Who is the curriculum for?
>
> Newbies in college, professionals transferring from Windows, employees at Canonical?
>

I know someone who wants to learn about scripting. An experienced
computer user with Windows and Linux but just wants to go in a little
deeper.

My original intention was to teach using a posix only shell because
I've gotten myself into trouble when not using a modern Linux
distribution (Solaris). Also, Debian based distros have stopped using
bash as /bin/sh because it significantly slows down boot speed,
instead they use dash, a posix shell that loads much quicker. (but
they use bash for the interactive shell still)

Do you agree that my reasoning for using a posix shell is wise or is
it really negligible and I should take the easy road of bash? And on
the heals of that, if someone uses standard posix methods that skill
works perfectly in bash, right?


--
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin, identi.ca and twitter

"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." -Benjamin Franklin
_______________________________________________
Cialug mailing list
Cialug at cialug.org
http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug