Intro to the Command Line

Two out of three web servers are running on a UNIX/Linux operating system. Yet for many web developers, even experienced ones, UNIX commandline tools can appear intimidating. What is that quintessential yet mysterious screen of green-on-black text you always see hackers staring at in the movies? How can you use its secrets to make computers do your bidding? Come find out!

In all seriousness, there are many introductory courses for common web development tasks, from backend programming in Python to HTML/CSS/JS on the frontend, but an oft overlooked topic is interacting with the *nix (Unix, Linux, OSX, etc) systems that run most of the internet. Using this mysterious text interface to control and operating system is an essential skill for anyone who wants to run their own servers (indeed for most servers, the terminal is the only interface provided).

In this course, we will cover the basics of using a terminal to control *nix operating systems. In addition, you will also learn how to use it to manipulate such things as the filesystem, the built-in help commands, file contents, program I/O, and remote systems. The course will be mostly interactive and participants will be asked to run commands on their own computers.

Prerequisities: Programming experience is not required. You must have administrative privileges on your laptop.

For Mac & Linux users - If your computer is less than 10 years old you should be good to go. You don't need to install additional software.

For Windows users - You will need to install VirtualBox with a Linux "guest" operating system. A tutorial explaining how to do this can be found here: http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/virtualbox . You can either do your own installation or join us at Good Karma the night before on the 15th at Good Karma on 10th and Pine for installation help. If you're interested, save the date and more details will be sent about it a week before class.

About the teacher: Bennet Huber is a professional software developer at Azavea, where he works on web and geo-spatial projects built on both Linux and Windows. Most of his work is in C#, Python, and JavaScript, but he also does HTML, CSS, and SQL on occasion. He received a B.S. in Computer Science and a minor in Mathematics from Penn State in 2010.
Bennet is an active member of the Philly tech community and regularly attends a variety of meetups, lectures, and hackathons. He first got involved in teaching through PyStar Philly last year and has TA'ed for several of their Python courses. In addition to teaching he's also interested in increasing diversity in his field which is why he recently got involved with GDI. When he's not working or attending tech meetups, you can find him sampling local brews (both caffeinated and alcoholic), playing the piano, or biking through the city like a maniac.