Not *Nixy Enough

My formal experience with using the terminal comes from completing CS50. Everything besides that are bits and pieces of OS knowledge from usage, most of which is MacOS-based since the terminal on Windows always felt weirdly inefficient despite all my years of using it as my main OS.

I’m currently perusing through The Missing Semester of Your CS Education in further prep for uni. And it’s all so amazing to me, seeing all the stuff that I’ve been missing, had the wrong conceptualization of, or just never had to use in my life. Genuinely, I’ve made it this far with ls cd rm mkdir clear and everything under the Git, Node, Python, and C umbrellas.

One of the key selling points of the Mac is the Unix basis, which I’ve never had a real appreciation for until I started making projects with it. I cannot verbalize, no matter how much I try, exactly how much I prefer it over Windows Command Prompt/Powershell. And I really have tried to like the Windows side, even got WSL2 working, just to never really use it, unfortunately. Using the terminal on Windows just lacks that je ne sais quoi.

An interesting further fun fact about my PC is the fact that I can’t demo blog posts on it before committing them. The command breaks on Windows, but not on MacOS. Why? God knows.

I’ve had the briefest experience using Linux back when I built my PC and didn’t have a Windows license on hand. It was Ubuntu, so while I could use the terminal for basic bits like working with Node, I didn’t get much use out of it beyond that. I’m considering getting a dual boot setup, if I get to bring my PC to my dorm. Might even “rice” it.

Getting the abstract groups of OS puzzle pieces floating around in my head to connect is fascinating.