Jul 16 2008
[Opinion] Every Efficient Developer Should Know…
… unix command-line tools, specifically for text processing. One of the most important learning experiences of my career was sitting down as part of my work at the CIIR and actually reading (cover to cover!) O’Reilly’s seminal book, sed and awk:
I followed up with a book on Unix shell scripting, and have literally used this knowledge countless times over multiple jobs and clients, in every imaginable situation. Every developer should take the time to learn these tools - the basics take only half a day - and then sit down and find something to use them on. You’ll wonder how you ever developed without them, and you can shock and amaze your Windows-loving colleagues with complex transformations and searches in a matter of seconds (of course, Windows-loving colleagues can always fall back on the venerable Cygwin suite).
What are tools that make you an efficient developer or designer? I’m not talking Eclipse or an IDE, but the stuff that wouldn’t immediately spring to mind. What esoteric (or not) learning experience has enhanced your productivity?
