Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I agree - this is one of the real issues with command-line computer literacy,
the cool stuff is hard to do.

Here I'll offer one way to understand the problem, in the hope it'll lead to
us developing something of a solution:

Think about written literacy - plain written language skills:

Assume you have a friend, an intelligent, creative, curious, motivated friend,
who does not know at all how to read and write. Assume that friend has grown
up with an entirely iamge-based language, maybe they cannot even speak in
words and sentences.

Now, make a list of the top 10 easy things your friend could do with written
langauge.
  

    
Heh.  And write the list in pictures, since your non-word-wielding
illiterate pal needs that to understand you.

Thankfully we're not that badly off, or nobody'd get interested in learning
command line except to be cool. 
  

    
Well you can say "we're not that badly off" if you like.

It might still be useful to try and think trough how, exactl;y, you would
teach  writing in those conditions.

How do we teach children reading and writing?
  

    
Well, we let 'em learn to talk first.
  

    
That's agood point. I do believe that Unix evolved, and is often best learned
in a verbal, face-to-face environment where someone can show you how it works.
At least until you get to a certain level and can seek out answers on your
own.
  

    
The difficulty with learning from a book can be summarized fairly
quickly.
I ask a friend some advice on a technical issue.  Usually only a few
seconds or minutes are required to determine whether or not assistance
can be rendered, while...
I may search a book, or books, for hours looking for something which
*might* help me.
Additionally, books are far more reluctant to help me work through a
problem.
  

    
On the other hand, books are very patient. Passive, but patient :-)
  

    
And you might not find what you're looking for, but you're likely to
learn something.
  

    
The best way to learn Unix, in my opinion, is to be in contact with experience
Unix users, for example at work, at school, on The WELL, etc. and also
to have access to some good written resources, stuff you can read at your
own pace at lunch time, and also have next to you when using the computer.
  

    
matisse thank you for your book, I have found it very helpful and am
learning unix rapidly as a result of reading it.
Keep it up!
  

    
Hi there!
I'm glad you like it.
(and thnaks to cdb for pointing me to your comment!)