This page provides an overview of the 'Missing Semester' course, focusing on the importance of the shell as a powerful tool for computer scientists. It covers motivation, class structure, the basics of navigating and using the shell, and exercises to reinforce learning. The course aims to equip students with practical skills beyond rote memorization of commands, enabling them to automate tasks and solve complex problems efficiently.
Gum is a utility that can enhance bash script input and output with minimal effort. It offers commands for prompting for input (lines, lists, yes/no), file picking, and displaying formatted output (markdown, tables, colors, etc.). The article details its features, installation, and provides a practical example using a number guessing game.
Amber is a new language that compiles to bash, offering modern syntax and compile-time checks while outputting a bash script. The article discusses its features, limitations, and provides a simple example of its usage.
Amber is a language that transpiles to bash, offering a more readable and maintainable way to script while retaining bash's ubiquity. The article discusses a recent FOSDEM 2026 presentation on best practices for using Amber, including examples of its Python-like syntax and dependency checking features. Zsh support is also in development.
Vercel has released Skills.sh, an open-source tool designed to provide AI agents with a standardized way to execute reusable actions, or skills, through the command line. The project introduces what Vercel describes as an open agent skills ecosystem, where developers can define, share, and run discrete operations that agents can invoke as part of their workflows.
Quoting and escaping are important, as they influence the way Bash acts upon your input. There are three recognized types: per-character escaping using a backslash, weak quoting with double-quotes, and strong quoting with single-quotes.
The ollama 0.14-rc2 release introduces experimental functionality allowing LLMs to use tools like bash and web searching on your system, with safeguards like interactive approval and command allow/denylists.
A guide to using YAD (Yet Another Dialog) for creating graphical user interfaces with bash scripts. It covers various dialog types, options, and examples.
This blog post details how to build a natural language Bash agent using NVIDIA Nemotron Nano v2, requiring roughly 200 lines of Python code. It covers the core components, safety considerations, and offers both a from-scratch implementation and a simplified approach using LangGraph.
An article detailing the author's experience replacing bash scripts with Python, outlining the improvements in readability, error handling, and testability, as well as the challenges encountered during the migration.
