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Love that this starts you right in the terminal and VSCode from the outset. A friend has been on the Codecademy grind as a new developer, and ~1 year in she is continually frustrated with how little focus it places on real-world tools and experiences. It seems they want to keep you in their in-browser interpreter for as long as they reasonably can.

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I strongly believe that you cannot be a good python or any other language developer without first a good linux shell use knowledge. Specially python of runs in nix environments. How can you ever develop without knowing these systems is beyond my understanding.

I've been a windows user forever, played with Ubuntu for a little bit years back, but I definitely don't know Linux well.

The only times that I ever use Linux are in docker containers.

I've spent years writing java, python, php, and only occasionally need to use a Linux shell. When I do, Google and stack overflow are good enough to get the job done.

Sure, maybe in some domains it's incredibly useful, but to be a decent developer? Not at all.

you can't be a good developer if you don't learn how programs are actually built and run at some point, but in my opinion it's counterproductive to start out with it.

My first language in uni was Java and we did start with the 'text editor + compile from cli' approach and 99% of people who were new to it literally don't get what or why they're typing obscure commands into the terminal.

I think your understanding is rather limited. It is quite easy to become a good developer in Python (or a lot of other languages) without ever touching Linux. Many people do it, and always have.

Does that mean they have the same skill set as you, or can solve the same problems in the same ways? No. But that doesn't mean they aren't good developers.

I would bet that at least 90% of the best embedded engineers I've known, don't have basic Linux shell knowledge. Frankly, Your ability to develop good code has little to do with whether or not you've touched a specific OS' shell

I strongly believe that you can never be a good developer before learning X.

*Where X is I some tech I myself have learnt.

I think people are pretty good at changing an existing system that is running. Which happens to be the context of almost all professional work.

Of course if you don't focus at all on the "first principles" operational stuff, when the existing system breaks, your debugging will take a long time. But that doesn't discount that loads of people are able to get a lot of work done without having a great grasp on the incidental complexity that comes with trying to get a virtual environment up or command line things.

For the first 20 years of my carrier I never touched a Linux shell because I moved right from the Amiga to Windows (and only since around 2010 to Mac and sometimes Linux, where the shell is a lot more useful than on Windows). Programming without ever touching the command line is different, but totally fine.

Also Python has very good Windows support, it's not particularly "*nix affine".

exercism.org (no affiliation) is pretty good in that regard, offering a cli to facilitate doing the exercises locally using tools you're already familiar with.

I like exercism, but the CLI can hide things like what a sane project structure looks like in that language.

I wish it generated a project with unit tests and told you which command to run (i.e. not an exercism command) in order to run those tests. That way you've got a more similar experience to what would happen if you cloned a project in that language and wanted to contribute.

Unfamiliar languages are much easier to deal with than unfamiliar tool chains IMO

I've had success in the CLI with elixir, running tests, and structure

It depends on the language. Some of their language tracks definitely do give those instructions.

Ah, good point. Either I did that thing where I only thought I was reading, or nim could use some work.

I second this, exercism.com is one of the best most practical cli ways I’ve found for a learning a new language.

So many courses demand you start in a text editor and I understand the rationale but I write almost everything in PyCharm and strongly encourage everyone to find a comfortable IDE.

If the intention of coding in Python is to get stuff done quickly, it seems a bit silly to handcuff yourself by avoiding one of the biggest time-savers.

> biggest time-savers

I strongly believe there's a balance to be struck between getting started quickly and understanding how your code is run. Especially if it's an interpreted language like Python.

If you do understand opening a terminal in your project's repository and executing `python3 ./mypythonfile` then this should be prioritized. Even for noobs.

Completely agree with your last point.

So many of my tools over the years have stuck with their simple command line initiation rather than wrapping into GUIs or other alternatives. Being able quickly write “python [whatever you are doing]” is awesome.

When teaching noobs I first have to tell them how to make folders, create files, what files are and where they are stored, modern systems abstract that all away.

I want them to realise that code is just text files, same with html

Edit: :3s/do/don’t

I worked with "senior" developers who were absolutely unable to run the project they were working on from a terminal. It was either the "play" button in the IDE or nothing.

If I were teaching someone Python, or pretty much any programming language, the first place I would start is the debugger. I would have them write a program as simple as this:

  x = 1
  print(x)
  y = 2
  print(x, y)

And then instead of just running it, I'd have them step through the code, line by line, and observe both the console output and the debugger variable display.

Some developers seem to think that using a debugger is a sign of weakness, or that it leads you to write bad code. I see it differently: the debugger is one of the best tools not only for debugging, but also to help you understand a complex codebase that you are jumping into.

I end up helping developers when they get stuck all the time and it is really amazing to me how many people get to the "senior developer" point in their career with very little understanding of how to use SQL tracing (e.g. MS SQL server) and IDE debugging.

Even the concept of the "print line" debugging into a lot file seems kind of foreign to them sometimes.

They instead rely on running the code, changing something, running it again, etc.

I am a big fan of reading through the code. That is almost always enough for me to find the issue and point it out to them assuming I understand the input and output context well enough. But if that doesn't work, add a debug point and fire it up. Not using a debugger seems like a massive waste of time in a situation like this. So much so that I have started asking "did you debug this" or "have you watched this happen in a debugger" before I will help out much. If they say "no" because they don't know how, I will teach them to do so.

> ...of how to use SQL tracing (e.g. MS SQL server)...

Never met this term before - IIUC, SQL tracing is MS-specific? If I may ask, in what kind of situations would you use it?

Yes, I think it might be SQL specific but you can normally do this in any transnational db I have worked with (I am old, I don't use GraphQL or NoSQL dbs very often, if at all).

Basically, it is just a journal of all queries (really ANYTHING going on in the db but for developers it is useful to limit to queries) and typically filtered by database and by keyword (e.g. table or stored procedure name).

You can set up a trace to track long-running queries on a production server (DBA might do this) or on a dev server a developer might use it to capture SQL run from their code (e.g. a complex stored procedure with a lot of input params) so you don't have to try to assemble the SQL using a debugger, for example.

A good example might be "I am doing everything right in code, but the data set is coming back empty" so you profile it and realize the SQL is being called with an empty string and not a null, or whatever. When reviewing the code you thought "it will be a null". That kind of thing.

> If I were teaching someone Python, or pretty much any programming language, the first place I would start is the debugger.

Totally agree.

In the first week of programming, students should be allowed only use the debugger (no direct runs) in every course/collage around the world. I saw firsthand how many courses/collages students struggle with logic because debugging was never introduced, and they were unaware of how to step through each line.

Another mistake that new programmers make is writing 30 lines of code and then run and lost why bugs occurring. As a rule of thumb, they should debug/run the program every 7 new lines of code.

Perhaps it was just my education, but my CS classes had almost zero real-world guidance on how to do anything. Maybe a one pager on how to install the development environment. No IDE workshops, source code control, project layout guidance, etc. Perhaps the non-theoretical aspects are distasteful to professors (astronomers and telescopes or something)?

I was a print-line debugger for years.

> Some developers seem to think that using a debugger is a sign of weakness

Really? I have never encountered that in the last 18 years in any of the 8 or 9 places I've worked.

I've worked with many know-it-alls who both knew it all and didn't. With arrogant and humble developers. No one ever said that.

You are right, it is uncommon. But here are some examples:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29387515

(See the last reply in that thread.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19829435

https://www.javacodegeeks.com/2013/05/debuggers-are-for-lose...

Wow ok.

I should consider myself lucky

Haha, it feels I could’ve written this comment. I learned programming at uni from a blackboard :’)

John Carmack had some interesting comments on debuggers (as opposed to "print debugging") in his recent interview with Lex Friedman. This was probably the most valuable thing I got out of their talk, because I myself use print debugging often. The main reason why I did this is that I use a lot of different languages (Julia, Go, JavaScript, Python, and so on) and it usually isn't worth it to me to learn a new and big IDE to small projects.

what did he say?

Not GP, but I assume this[0] is the talk. Clocking in at five hours, you might have to dedicate some time to it. The timestamps on the show indicate programming is discussed somewhere between the 10 and 51 minute marks.

[0]: https://lexfridman.com/john-carmack/

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