It was one of my main problems with Ubuntu: its desktop environment, Unity, was quite heavy, slow, and buggy. It’s also why CLIs are fast: no need to mess up with the display and other graphical elements. ![]() CLIs have only textual interfaces, which are easier to develop, to change, and to maintain. Designing and implementing these graphical interfaces takes a lot more work. Second, because it’s easier to develop CLIs than GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces). First, because the Linux shell is around for a long time developers had time to develop many tools and make them reliable. For example, you can use altogether the CLIs “history”, “sort”, “uniq” and “head” to display the CLIs you use the most and the frequency of their use. The big advantage of these tools: they are very simple and limited in isolation, but you can chain them for powerful results. They’re called CLIs (Command-Line Interfaces). It’s because the shell is really powerful: it allows you to run many small programs which work very well together. If we would compare the Mouseless Development Environment to the solar system, the shell would be the sun and everything else would turn around it. The terms “command-line” and “shell” are synonyms. ![]() It will also, sometimes, give you an output back. You can feed it with commands and it will execute them to perform some actions. On Linux, this shell is often Bash, but it can be another one too, e.h. The terminal is a graphical interface that allows you to interact with the shell. The Benefits Of The Shellīefore speaking about the benefits of using the shell and the terminal, let’s explain briefly what’s the difference between these two ideas. This is a powerful tool that can simplify your workflow by automating away all the boring tasks. Mouseless With The ShellĪs a developer, it’s almost impossible to avoid using a shell. That’s why I encourage you to install them, experiment with them, and see by yourself if you fall in love as I did. I would have never discovered this new way of working without trying these tools. For Windows, the easiest way is to use the Windows Linux Subsystem (WSL) to install and use them. You can also use them with macOS except for i3. Note: The tools I advocate in this article work on Linux-based systems. How to have a great terminal experience with URxvt, tmux, and tmuxp.The advantage of a tiling window manager.Why using the Linux shell can be very powerful when working with plain text (including code).They work well together - shaping what I call my Mouseless Development Environment. Today, I’d like to share with you these tools so that you too can increase your efficiency and your comfort in your daily job. I can reinstall my whole system with a bunch of scripts I’ve written, including all the tools I use and their configurations. I use the keyboard 92.8% of the time to manage all my tools, using keystrokes that make sense and which are easy to remember. I still use the same development environment today. These tools improved my workflow drastically they showed me how practical it was for a developer to keep the hands on the keyboard as much as possible. They guided me, showed me the tools which solved all the problems I had with Ubuntu. They knew a lot about Linux and the different distributions I could use. My life as a developer changed again when my company hired two great developers. During this time, I’ve never managed to update it to its next major version without the need to reinstall everything manually, again and again. ![]() But I didn’t know any other alternative, so I kept using Ubuntu for years. All and all, it took me days to get back to the system I had before the crash. The worst part was reconfiguring everything. I had to reinstall everything manually - Ubuntu and all my tools. Ubuntu was abstracting all the nitty-gritty for me not to care about it. I had no idea how I could solve the problems I was facing because I had no idea how Linux was working under the hood. One day, something terrible happened: I had to update Ubuntu to its next major version. I was often the victim of display bugs and crashes, and it was getting slower and slower as time passed. Suddenly, I had access to the Linux shell, a tool offering many ways to automate everything I didn’t want to do again and again.īut Ubuntu wasn’t without drawbacks. Once upon a time, in the magical land of Software development, there was a young developer, your humble servant, discovering Linux for the first time. This can save a lot of cognitive energy as well as deliver a pleasant user experience. You can use tools that fit nicely with each other, you can customize everything depending on your own needs, and the biggest of all, you can control your entire development environment with your keyboard. Building a development environment with the shell as a keystone offers multiple benefits.
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