I would say they are among the most important skills a programmer could have - the amount of time I have saved by being able to do fast manipulation with chains of things like sort, tr, sed, awk, head, tail, paste, strings, nm, hexdump, xargs, etc. and get diagnostic information for deeper issues
it's like anything else; each tool is just a building block. the number of creative things you can do with very little effort by piping the output of one to the input of another is incredibly powerful. it's not always computationally efficient, but many times that doesn't matter.
Python is another great tool, but sometimes a machete is quicker and easier. Different tools for different situations.
it's like anything else; each tool is just a building block. the number of creative things you can do with very little effort by piping the output of one to the input of another is incredibly powerful. it's not always computationally efficient, but many times that doesn't matter.
Python is another great tool, but sometimes a machete is quicker and easier. Different tools for different situations.