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Learner Reviews & Feedback for The Unix Workbench by Johns Hopkins University

4.7
stars
1,348 ratings

About the Course

Unix forms a foundation that is often very helpful for accomplishing other goals you might have for you and your computer, whether that goal is running a business, writing a book, curing disease, or creating the next great app. The means to these goals are sometimes carried out by writing software. Software can’t be mined out of the ground, nor can software seeds be planted in spring to harvest by autumn. Software isn’t produced in factories on an assembly line. Software is a hand-made, often bespoke good. If a software developer is an artisan, then Unix is their workbench. Unix provides an essential and simple set of tools in a distraction-free environment. Even if you’re not a software developer learning Unix can open you up to new methods of thinking and novel ways to scale your ideas. This course is intended for folks who are new to programming and new to Unix-like operating systems like macOS and Linux distributions like Ubuntu. Most of the technologies discussed in this course will be accessed via a command line interface. Command line interfaces can seem alien at first, so this course attempts to draw parallels between using the command line and actions that you would normally take while using your mouse and keyboard. You’ll also learn how to write little pieces of software in a programming language called Bash, which allows you to connect together the tools we’ll discuss. My hope is that by the end of this course you be able to use different Unix tools as if they’re interconnecting Lego bricks....

Top reviews

SM

May 25, 2022

This course is extremly helpful and well designed for beginnner and working professionals with neat info. I strongly recomended this course. Thanks for mentors/authors with real time example commands.

RW

Apr 30, 2020

This is a very friendly step-by-step guide to Unix for beginners, it helps to build a solid foundation, and the exercises are designed to explore more about what has been introduced in the course.

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401 - 402 of 402 Reviews for The Unix Workbench

By Jason J

•

Dec 15, 2020

When you get to week 2 and there are questions about 2 text files that you are just magically supposed to have, even though no links have ever been provided, and you search the forums and see students asking where they are in 2017, and still there are no links in 2020, you realize this is an abandoned course and is not worth your time or mine.

By Essam A G

•

Dec 15, 2023

Being a text only course is very boring