Learning the Powershell

So I cracked into Zed Shaw's Learn Ruby the Hard Way and was immediately met with a bit of a choice.  Do some follow up background on the command prompt or dive right into the book?  I decided to go ahead and do the legwork and get some knowledge of the command prompt in no small part because Shaw seems to have a gift for guilting you into doing things the right way.  Apparently, my hundreds of hours screwing around on the computer in the early 1990s have earned me something - a pretty solid knowledge of the command prompt.

These days, you never find a computer at C:\ unless something has gone horrifically wrong.  Back in the day, this was pretty much all you had (woot, Dos!)...I mean there was a version of Windows (3.0, 3.1!) but we harshly mocked people that used it.  I still remember the shrieks of barely computer literate high school keyboarding instructors "GET OUT OF THE DIRECTORIES" as we installed games and other less savory programs on the school's computers.  Back in the day it was pretty rare to have any idea what this structure was and I think it is even more rare now.

That said, I do remember a lot about the "Directories" as I spent hours editing "autoexec.bat" and "config.sys" files as I tinkered with my computer and attempted to get games to work.  While some of the commands are slightly different, most of it is pretty much the same.  I must say, after having some tough times on Code Academy and at the end of Pine's Learn to Program book it was nice to go through something that made sense to me....even if it had nothing to do with Ruby.  At any rate, I got it done tonight and tomorrow I will begin in earnest on the Ruby Exercises.

So far I enjoy Shaw's no nonsense writing style.  I can understand how a person might find it abrasive if you are taking it the wrong way, but I think he is trying to be a straight shooter and tell you realistically what you need to know in order to succeed.  My son (age 6) once had a swimming instructor that always told him he was doing great even though he was more or less flopping around at times.  Under that type of instruction, nobody gets better.  I am hoping Shaw's insistence on memorization and practice will help me to extend my understanding of Ruby.

Total hours into Programming: 57 (5 yesterday)
My Text game: 2 hours, 107 lines

Progress on Shaw's Learning Ruby the Hard Way: Appendix Finished, Ready for Exercise 1

Progress on Hartl's Tutorial Ready to start Chapter 3! 

Code Academy Points: 564
Code Academy Badges: 59

Code Academy Skills Finished: 2 (Make a Website, Ruby)

Books Finished:

Chris Pine's Learn to Program 8/9/2015