Show HN: I wrote a modern Command Line Handbook

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Website & Landing Page UX

  • Multiple people report the landing page is broken on mobile (text cut off, large title overflowing) across several Android browsers.
  • A contributor offers concrete CSS tweaks to fix font scaling and image overflow.
  • Several ask for a table of contents and clear sample pages; many only discovered them via comments or Gumroad, not the homepage.
  • Copy nitpicks include idioms (“hot off the press”, “in 120 pages”) and general English polishing.

Format, Distribution & Pricing

  • Some are eager to pay but dislike the PDF-only format, preferring epub for Kindles or small devices.
  • Others suggest converting via Calibre or relying on Kindle’s “Send to Kindle” / reflow.
  • There’s interest in a physical print-on-demand version; Amazon KDP is suggested as straightforward and compatible with PDF.
  • The author uses a “pay what you want” model primarily to share the work rather than maximize revenue; expectations for income are modest.

Content Accuracy & Typesetting

  • Readers report minor technical issues (e.g., regex wording, behavior of Ctrl-D, incomplete PATH example, diff-with-ls example).
  • Some debate whether certain examples are “best practice” versus good demonstrations of concepts like process substitution.
  • Typesetting issues in the PDF (examples split across pages, awkward page breaks, multi-page footers) are seen as breaking reading flow, especially on screens.

Target Audience & Pedagogical Use

  • Several educators plan to recommend or use the book for teaching basic CLI skills to beginners, especially interactive usage (history, job control) rather than just scripting.
  • Readers want clearer positioning on the homepage: is it for total beginners or intermediate bash users?
  • Suggestions include adding more explicit real-world scenarios and short notes tying examples to practical use.

Shell Philosophy & Alternatives

  • Debate over bash’s role: some argue anything beyond short scripts should move to higher-level languages (Python, Node), citing maintainability, lack of data structures, poor testing/debugging.
  • Others emphasize the need to understand shell regardless, due to legacy scripts and CI usage.
  • There’s discussion of focusing on standard tools (find, grep, make) versus newer utilities (fd, fzf, rg, Just); the book explicitly prioritizes tools available by default for portability.

Favorite CLI Concepts & Tools

  • Users share “aha” commands and concepts:
    • Core: find, grep, xargs, awk, sed, regular expressions, parameter expansion, job control.
    • Shell quality-of-life: Ctrl-R, set -o vi, set -o xtrace, lsof, process substitution.
    • Desktop tweaks: aliasing xdg-open to open, using notify-send for completion alerts.
    • Modern helpers: bat, zoxide, tig, atuin, choose, direnv, fd, fzf, gh, ripgrep.

Related Resources & Supplementary Material

  • Commenters share complementary learning resources: interactive tutorials, Linux learning sites, TUI-based practice apps, and other shell-related zines/handbooks.
  • There’s interest in exercises or small projects aligned to sections of the book to motivate less-engaged learners.