Development Tools

Choosing a language

Programming is an applied skill. If we want to learn it, we should choose a programming language and solve tasks. This is the only way to acquire practical skills.

We will use the Bash language in this course. This language is convenient for automating computer administration tasks. Here are a few examples of what we can do with Bash:

• Create data backups
• Manipulate directories and files
• Run programs and transfer data between them

Bash was developed in the Unix environment. So, it bears the imprint of the Unix philosophy. Despite its roots, we can also use Bash on Windows and macOS.

A Bash interpreter and a terminal emulator are needed to run the examples available on the Educative’s platform. Let’s discuss how to install them:

• If we want to run the examples locally, we can install a Bash interpreter and a terminal emulator on all modern operating systems. If we use Linux or macOS, we have a pre-installed Bash interpreter.
• For Windows, we can use the Minimal SYStem (MSYS). It is the MinGW (Minimalist GNU for Windows) component that includes Bash, a terminal emulator, and GNU utilities. They can be installed by following the steps here.

Bash Interpreter

Bash is a script programming language with the following features:

1. It is an interpreted language.
2. It operates existing programs or high-level commands.
3. We can use it as a shell to access the OS functions.