Why I have a technophilic relationship with dsl

Forum: User Feedback
Topic: Why I have a technophilic relationship with dsl
started by: WoofyDugfock

Posted by WoofyDugfock on Oct. 26 2004,14:34

Well I suppose regulars may have seen one or two of my posts
- these tend to be at varying levels of understanding or otherwise.

I've been busy elsewhere lately and it's all because of dsl. During many years of Win & Mac, and after several early years of ye olde system languages at university many years ago (I can't tell you how insanely awful punch card input with a large assembly language program was - several runs just to get the typos out!). Would have been easier to rewire Eniac. (The year after me got interactive terminals!).

I never had the slightest inclination to learn any scripting or probe any deeper into the workings of the evil box.
I downloaded dsl initially because it was a small download cf. big distros and I had a nagging
unexplained desire to fiddle about with linux. I had heard, and had an inkling, that linux was the way to really start learning a bit more about the technology and I was right.

DSL, with its minimalist philosophy and clean lines, intrigued me and I have found it's just not good enough with dsl not to take an interest in the command line, so I've been teaching myself bash scripting (which I like), and am now 85% way through the python tutorial also (object oriented was initially v strange, like Venusian, but I'm
getting the hang of it).

Groping around with dsl and bash/python is quite educational - I want to know more. When I can write a few workable python scripts I might even look further.

I'm even half toying with the idea of returning to some further (probably online) study in the IT area if I can deal with all the practical hurdles. But there's a lot to consider ...including the stability (or otherwise) of my present employment and minor details like eating...

Anyway my grateful thanks to all the dsl developers and supporters for their efforts.

Just to let you know it's had an impact on me and my interest in the technology...

Regards

WDf

Posted by AwPhuch on Oct. 26 2004,16:17

Welcome to the Revolution!!!

Glad to see you have a new interest

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by caulktel on Oct. 26 2004,16:41

Hey Woof,

Just curios, how old are you? The reason I ask is I also would like to learn bash scripting, but don't know if this old dog can learn new tricks at 48. I can kind of relate to your post, but never could have put it so eloquently. DSL has rekindled my interest in the command line that I lost in the DOS days. Nowadays most people are nothing more than applience operaters when it comes to computing, only clicking but not understanding whats going on under the hood. I wrote a one line shell script to remove the Wine tmp file on shut down on my Yoper box, and was quite proud of myself, but it just boggles my mind to see some of the scripts that other people write that go on for 100's of lines. I would like to learn how to do that, but don't really know where to start. Google maybe?

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Oct. 26 2004,16:46

< This is where I learned to write shell scripts >

It's a pretty easy tutorial to learn from.

-J.P.

Posted by caulktel on Oct. 26 2004,16:57

Thanks Saidin,

I will check this site out. Just at first glance, I already know some of the things it talked about, like chmod the script and things like that, so maybe it won't be so hard.

Posted by mikshaw on Oct. 26 2004,17:25

Another good source:
< http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/index.html >
I still haven't read half of it, but it's a great piece of documentation.

I went from being terrified of commandline to prefering it in a couple of months. Linux is definitely an adventure for anyone interested in learning.

Posted by roberts on Oct. 26 2004,17:44

Thanks for the kind remarks, Woofy. As a developer DSL it is what keeps me going. I try to write mostly in scripting languages so that the "source" is "open" for all to see.

Posted by WoofyDugfock on Oct. 27 2004,06:28

Thanks again all - especially to John for starting the whole thing and to Roberts and the other developers for their generosity.

Advisory: readers under 40 should skip the next paragraph or two of (albeit early) middle aged rant.

rant_middle_aged()
# begin
{
Caulktel, we're around the same age. I think we must maintain and believe that we are both far too young to start thinking of ourselves as too "old" to learn new tricks. I know that if we allow ourselves to think that way then we might come to believe it, which is fatal. Hell we're only barely middle aged! Many people our age are considered to be "at the peak of their careers". Remember that the world is largely run by people our age and much older (which is not to say that they do a good job). Our cultures might be youth/beauty obsessed but the baby boomers (of which we're on the tail end) run things and control much or all of the the capital - although I personally don't control much I can tell you, and if I consider this the peak of my career then I don't have much to look forward to (which is also a fatal point of view). And I have known, as the cliche goes, people at 18 who might as well have been 75, considering their mental ossification.

Technology may be tyrannically wielded by the very young, but many great artists, scientists and entrepreneurs only began to find their swing at our age or hadn't yet found it. Don't forget the great late starters of history, compared to which we are still but young chickens eg here are a few < http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/latestart.html >

So fiddle-ee-dee, dagnabbit, dribble-drool, where's my blanket etc!!
}
# end - rant_middle_aged finishes here
# continue

I agree that green screen DOS was an interest killer - it was for me also - but it's surprising how many whipper-snipper geek types actually like it, especially when considering the infinitely greater power available in the *nix shell.

The huge volume of bash stuff on google is perhaps one of the best reasons to learn to use it - there is so much stuff there. The man entries are often helpful although I'm sure others will agree this doesn't make the cryptic-and-often-perverse "sed" (of which there seems to be a thousand versions each with slightly differing syntax - grrrrrr!) any easier to figure out - the man entry for sed (which I think contains no examples) is next to useless.

Personally I have found a few urls especially good - I'll post these when I boot into dsl later as they are bookmarked within dillo.

Posted by WoofyDugfock on Oct. 27 2004,08:43

Caulktel -

If you're like me you may want to start with a basic overview that you can absorb in a few hours and start scripting, and then get into more detailed reference materials as you need them. Remember that you can just type a few bash lines straight into the shell to see how they work - you don't always have to save them as a script, chmod +w and run.

1. I began with the basic stuff at < http://www.justlinux.com/nhf....ng.html >

2. Then I looked at
< http://mercury.chem.pitt.edu/~sasha....6.shtml >
which is another brief overview but is slightly more advanced.

I liked both which is not to say that I have absorbed these completely yet.

3. More recently I've also been looking selectively as I need to at parts of
< http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man1/bash.1.html >
which appears to be the actual definition of bash.

PS: SaidinUnleashed and Mikshaw's urls above are really really excellent - I've just been going through bits of the former (love the Indian english!) - but these are also possibly a bit daunting (as is 3 above) - if so you may wish to start with something like 1 and 2 above.

I mentioned the editior sed. The following is very comprehensive but I'll probably be avoiding sed for the time being:

< http://www.student.northpark.edu/pemente/sed/sedfaq.html >

Posted by Grim on Oct. 27 2004,11:49

mikshaw beat me to mentioning TLDP (a _very_ good bash scripting guide) which only takes a couple of hours to read. There's also a < reference to shell scripting for C programmers >, (which makes more sense to me, your miles may vary).

There's a really good overview of sed at < the seder's grab bag >, which also happens to be located at the sed's sourceforge homepage. Really though, you only need to learn enough sed and awk to get by, for everything else there's perl = ).

The way I learned a lot more than I wanted to know about bash scripting is to write < blogging software > (yes, again, I am whoring my shit).

Posted by caulktel on Oct. 27 2004,16:27

Thanks Woffy for all the encourgment and Grim and Mikshaw for the links. I bookmarked all the links and will start digesting all this info.
I have DSL on a Pentium 133 laptop with 96 megs of ram, it runs great!
So that is where I will practice. Thanks again guys. BTW, Woofy, # 1 looks to be right up my alley, for now.

Posted by AwPhuch on Oct. 27 2004,18:56

Quote (caulktel @ Oct. 27 2004,12:27)

I only wish I had 96Megs ram...

Kids complain about the lagginess when playing games...but they still love it...

They want to play the simple games of DSL more than they want to play Halo or Counterstrike, or even Call of Duty or whatnot on more powerful machines!! (good for daddy since I get more puter time hehe)

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by WoofyDugfock on Oct. 29 2004,05:46

Glad my insane ravings were of assistance Caulktel - of course you may have gathered I was also trying to motivate myself :;):

That sed link appears to do it all Grim. It does appear that only a masochist or someone with very good reasons would want to do anything with sed that was not already dished up ready-to-use in one of those one liners. Perl will have to wait in line for me though until I've achieved some superficial understanding of Python. I do get the impression bash is something you just keep picking up as you try more complex scripts and look things up as you need them.

Hey Awpuch - yeah I've seen at least one kid in the local internet cafe playing Flash versions of ancient games like Space Invaders (which I never liked much the first time around, but then I'm not a big gamer). And a 19 yo friend of mine actively downloads, collects & runs these archeological relics on his 64-bit pc! Some kind of retro thing ...