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.
Offered By
The Unix Workbench
Johns Hopkins UniversityAbout this Course
Learner Career Outcomes
31%
25%
Skills you will gain
Learner Career Outcomes
31%
25%
Offered by
Johns Hopkins University
The mission of The Johns Hopkins University is to educate its students and cultivate their capacity for life-long learning, to foster independent and original research, and to bring the benefits of discovery to the world.
Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
Unix and Command Line Basics
This week we'll help you get access to Unix (you may already be using it), and you'll start using the command line. We'll draw parallels between using your mouse and keyboard with your computer's graphics versus only using the command line.
Working with Unix
Now we'll get into the power of different Unix tools. We'll walk through several scenarios where you could use Unix to perform tasks at a much faster speed than you would be able to normally.
Bash Programming
During this week we'll unleash the command line's usefulness as a programming language. By the end of this week you'll be writing your own little computer programs that you can use on the command line.
Git and GitHub
First you'll learn how to use Git, which is like "track changes" for your code and plain text files, but much more powerful. We'll then explore how to use Git with GitHub, a social coding network where you can publish you projects and explore other's code.
Nephology
Finally we'll set up a cloud computing environment so we can explore how computers communicate with each other using the internet.
Reviews
TOP REVIEWS FROM THE UNIX WORKBENCH
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.
A wonderful course! Answered so many questions I had and gave me a solid background in Git, Bash, makefiles, and working from the cloud. I will definitely be using these skills in my job search!
It is suitable for Unix/Linux beginners who are new to shell. It introduces popular code sharing and merging tool GitHub, which most programmers would find very useful in software development.
Very good course. I had a fair working knowledge to begin with, but the course expanded my understanding and skills to where I can actively apply them in my work. It comes highly recommended.
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