This week has been fairly challenging. I'm enjoying learning more about command-line interfaces and about the history of open source software such as Linux. "In the Beginning was the Command Line" is a sort of stream of consciousness rant combined with serious experiences with both Graphic User Interfaces (GUI) from both Apple and Microsoft. The CLI information is pretty useful and some of the perspective about American society and it's love of metaphors and media is quite interesting. Eric S Raymond wrote "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" about two of the main methods of software development. The Cathedral stands for the method of using a centralized person or core team to create software code for an application. This was the de facto standard for many years. The Bazaar stands for open source software development exemplified by how the kernal for Linux was developed - using all kinds of volunteers from anywhere an everywhere. One key concept for open source can be expressed with the truism that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." The idea of opening up software development to as many eyeballs as possible and then basically being a referee to determine when the best solution has been found is pretty revolutionary. Raymond things it is "subversive" and I think he likes that a lot!
As far as actual use of the CLI, I've had a few problems this week. I found out the hard way that you have to be careful when placing an exclamation point in the command. I needed it in there as part of the format of the command from vi to the shell, but when I placed it where the name was supposed to go, I had all kinds of weird behaviors coming out of my system. I got some expert help to solve the problem and I'm sure getting more careful about what I type after those prompts in Ubuntu! I look forward to more practice with using the various commands and tools in Linux. I'm sure that with some practice, things will be easier than they are now and I won't get stuck not knowing where I am or how to escape for hours at a time.
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