[kitsunesoba]

> I myself didn't really consider how I could use code to speed up mundane tasks until I was forced to copy files over from an embedded Linux system over bash. The introduction from "open up a terminal, and type these commands in, which does these things" to "now just put those commands in a file called script.sh and type ./script.sh, and it will do the thing automatically" was eye-opening, at 22 years old. Looking back, it's the exact same problem that resulted in a company I used to work for doing 100s of GB of data processing in Excel, because writing Excel macros was more accessible than writing a bash script to append two .csv files.

I mean, Linux specifically isn't really necessary for this. Back in the early-mid 00s, OS X got me into terminal usage and "real" programming via its free (as in beer), full-octane bundled dev tools and included Ruby installation.

In fact, at the point that I got into these things with OS X, I had already tinkered with a Linux variant (Yellow Dog) and had given up before getting too far because I didn't have the knowhow to make the OS as a whole work properly, and worse, the internet resources needed to fill this knowledge gap didn't make themselves obvious.

[qchris]

I can agree with this, which is why I added the "(to a lesser degree) Apple" caveat. I think, especially now, it seems they're moving in a less hacker-friendly direction in terms ability to progress from write-a-script to build-you-own-environment, but certainly is better than Windows. I've only heard of Yellow Dog, but for many modern distros, the transition from "flash this file to a USB drive using this program, plug in, and turn the computer on" seems like it should be a much more accessible option (even for people without an Apple budget) than it was even 10 years ago.

[kitsunesoba]

> I've only heard of Yellow Dog, but for many modern distros, the transition from "flash this file to a USB drive using this program, plug in, and turn the computer on" seems like it should be a much more accessible option (even for people without an Apple budget) than it was even 10 years ago.

Yeah, this was over 15 years ago. Yellow Dog was basically Red Hat PowerPC edition, so imagine Red Hat circa 2002.

Things have certainly gotten easier since then though, no question.