Thank you!

If you joined for the live stream or are watching the workshop later, thank you! I’ve never given a technical workshop quite like this. I am much more used to talking one-on-one with people, and so I think I was a bit too ambition on what I could actually cover going into this.

If I were to do it again, I would have maybe tried jumping straight into the practical examples faster, and then working backwards. (Which is actually how I have learned any of this.) I have included a Table of Contents below so you can navigate this document easier, and so you can jump straight to the command line snippets if you’d like to dive straight in.

If you have any feedback for me (please, I need it!) or have any questions, you can find me on Twitter or check out my contact page to grab my email.

An idea for next time?

I can’t stop thinking about how I could have made this better. So here’s an idea for “next time.”

Rather than just talking and showing stuff the whole time, I think it would be better to supply a folder of files that we can then manipulate and work on together. That way you can try things in real time, and learn by doing.

Foundation

What is the command line?

• Command line interface (cli) vs. Graphical Use Interface (GUI)
  • GUI is what you’re probably used to using. You are interacting with an interface which then does things on your computer. Examples include your web browser, Photoshop, etc.
  • The command line is how you talk directly to your computer. You enter in commands, and then your computer executes those commands.
• How do you actually interact with the command line?
  • The easiest way is to use the Terminal app on your computer.
    • Go to Applications > Utilities > Terminal.app
  • There are other programs you can use to interact with the command line. For example, I use iTerm but truth be told I only downloaded this because someone else recommended it and I thought it looked cool! But it mostly operates the same was the Terminal, however, I think it has more opportunities for customization.

Things to remember

• When Googling stuff, remember to include “mac” because not all command line stuff works across operating systems.
• Spaces (and some special characters) in folder or file names require you to place a \\ before them
• $ at the beginning of a line of code signals that you are using the “bash shell” on your computer.
  • You may see this pop up in code snippets when you are Googling stuff. It is worth remembering that people tend to include this in code snippets just to signify that the code is intended for the command line. You are not intended to type the $ at the beginning of the code.
  • This note is just about when you see the $ at the beginning of the code, NOT when it is inside of the code.
• In the command line, you can use your cursor to select text or move around, you need to use the arrow keys. There are some shortcuts for jumping around, but I don’t know them off hand.
• The command line is also case sensitive. Beware 👀

<aside> ⚠️ There is no UNDO! If you are performing a command on a file that is going to manipulate that file (resize, crop, delete, etc.), then you must remember that the command line does not come with an undo button.

To avoid mistakes, you can duplicate the file before hand and then perform the command(s) on that duplicate. Or you can make sure that your command outputs a copy of the original and doesn’t actually alter the original. Each tool may have a different way of approaching this so you may need to experiment and familiarize yourself first.

</aside>