Chapter 1
Getting Your Feet Wet

When you hear about the command-line interface, or CLI, from other developers, you often hear about how much faster it is than a graphical environment. But if you’re like most developers, you’re probably pretty good with your computer. You know some keyboard shortcuts that help you move even faster. The best way to see the real value of the CLI is to just dive right in to some hands-on activities, while learning a few time-saving techniques along the way. In this chapter, you’ll use the command line to do some things you probably know how to do already through the graphical interface. You’ll work with files and directories, navigate around a bit, install some software, and get more information about the commands you’re typing. We’re just going to scratch the surface in this first chapter; we’ll go into more detail on many of the topics in the rest of the book, and we’ll even review these topics again to help them stick. This chapter is designed to give you a taste of working with the command-line interface.

But first, you have to find the command-line interface.