Dev 101: Terminal velocity

In the Dev 101 series I cover some basic concepts of computer programming for a broad audience. I guess it’s the explanation I was looking for myself, when I first started out as a programmer…

Photo by Tracy Adams on Unsplash

Introduction

When you ask a developer to remove a folder from their filesystem, chances are small she will use a file manager and drag and drop that folder to the trash. More often than not, she will simply fire up a terminal window and type a command like so:

~$ rm myfolder/ -r

But why would a developer prefer the terminal’s plain layout and cryptic commands over the appealing design and user-friendliness of a file manager? It’s not even usual for beginning programmers to avoid graphical user interfaces at all costs — depriving themselves deliberately of the “easy way” to do things, in order to master the so-called “command line interface”.

So why is that?

Operating system, terminal and shell

Before we can answer these questions, we need to cover some basics.

Most of us are familiar, at least on an elemental level, with the concept of an operating system (OS). It is a collection of system software that manages both computer hardware and other software. Hardware means that it handles the computer’s…