Hacker News Reader

Comment by holoduke | Hacker News Reader

I strongly believe that you cannot be a good python or any other language developer without first a good linux shell use knowledge. Specially python of runs in nix environments. How can you ever develop without knowing these systems is beyond my understanding.

View on HN

I would bet that at least 90% of the best embedded engineers I've known, don't have basic Linux shell knowledge. Frankly, Your ability to develop good code has little to do with whether or not you've touched a specific OS' shell

I've been a windows user forever, played with Ubuntu for a little bit years back, but I definitely don't know Linux well.

The only times that I ever use Linux are in docker containers.

I've spent years writing java, python, php, and only occasionally need to use a Linux shell. When I do, Google and stack overflow are good enough to get the job done.

Sure, maybe in some domains it's incredibly useful, but to be a decent developer? Not at all.

I strongly believe that you can never be a good developer before learning X.

*Where X is I some tech I myself have learnt.

I think your understanding is rather limited. It is quite easy to become a good developer in Python (or a lot of other languages) without ever touching Linux. Many people do it, and always have.

Does that mean they have the same skill set as you, or can solve the same problems in the same ways? No. But that doesn't mean they aren't good developers.

I think people are pretty good at changing an existing system that is running. Which happens to be the context of almost all professional work.

Of course if you don't focus at all on the "first principles" operational stuff, when the existing system breaks, your debugging will take a long time. But that doesn't discount that loads of people are able to get a lot of work done without having a great grasp on the incidental complexity that comes with trying to get a virtual environment up or command line things.

you can't be a good developer if you don't learn how programs are actually built and run at some point, but in my opinion it's counterproductive to start out with it.

My first language in uni was Java and we did start with the 'text editor + compile from cli' approach and 99% of people who were new to it literally don't get what or why they're typing obscure commands into the terminal.

For the first 20 years of my carrier I never touched a Linux shell because I moved right from the Amiga to Windows (and only since around 2010 to Mac and sometimes Linux, where the shell is a lot more useful than on Windows). Programming without ever touching the command line is different, but totally fine.

Also Python has very good Windows support, it's not particularly "*nix affine".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com