I'm writing "The Impostor's Guide To The Shell". My theory is that reading popular open-source codebases, and Googling stuff you don't understand until you grok it, is a great way to overcome impostor's syndrome. The goal is to take a reader from thinking "Maybe a 10x engineer could understand that library, but I never could..." to "Oh, that's all it does?".
The guide covers things like:
- shebangs
- exit codes
- parameter expansion
- file permissions
- how to look up docs via "man" and "help"
- And a lot more.
The codebase I'm starting with is a Ruby version manager (written in bash) called RBENV. I've published it onto a platform called HelpThisBook.com, a platform to help authors get feedback from early readers (co-created by Rob Fitzpatrick, author of "The Mom Test", "Write Useful Books", etc.). Instructions on how to leave feedback should be given when you open the link below.
Too late to edit my original post, so adding this comment to say that the above link just covers RBENV’s shim file code, not the whole codebase.
I have a 600+ page Google doc which covers the remaining code, and which I mostly wrote for my own edification. I was worried about overwhelming my potential audience by showing it all to them at once, and I want to get feedback on just this first section, before releasing the rest.
We’ll see how it goes with just this small first section.
Oh wow, thanks for the compliment! You're the first person to ask haha.
The first step in this process is making sure I'm even writing something that's useful to my target audience. So for now, I'm laser-focused on getting reader feedback via that HelpThisBook.com site.
That said, I'm continuing to add more free content to that site on a weekly basis. I recommend watching that space for more updates.
The guide covers things like:
- shebangs
- exit codes
- parameter expansion
- file permissions
- how to look up docs via "man" and "help"
- And a lot more.
The codebase I'm starting with is a Ruby version manager (written in bash) called RBENV. I've published it onto a platform called HelpThisBook.com, a platform to help authors get feedback from early readers (co-created by Rob Fitzpatrick, author of "The Mom Test", "Write Useful Books", etc.). Instructions on how to leave feedback should be given when you open the link below.
https://helpthisbook.com/richie/impostors-guide-to-the-shell