4 ms·

Again, the assumption that everybody is a web programmer. No wonder people approach the command line with obsequious awe!

perlgeek 16y ago
For the non-web (and sometimes even for the web) programmer, strace can be a real life saver. An application complains about not being able to find a file, but doesn't report where it looked for it? strace can tell. Do you want to know why a system call failed, and the app is too crappy to report the error? strace to the rescue! Of course, if you're lucky you might even have access to dtrace...
- mkjones 16y ago
  This mostly-web programmer finds strace and (more often) ngrep (http://linux.die.net/man/8/ngrep http://linux.die.net/man/8/ngrep) to be some of the most useful tools out there for debugging errors both strange and mundane.
- crux_ 16y ago
  My favorite strace story: trying to get at the underlying causes of some "Unexpected Error" messages in ArcGIS, and it turns out it's writing helpful and useful (albeit two decades old) logging + error messages to the Windows equivalent of /dev/null. shakes fist @ ESRI HQ once again
- khafra 16y ago
  For me as a user, strace can be a real life saver. I'm not hep enough to the jive to read the source code and figure out what [incredibly uninformative error message regarding file access] means, but I can read strace output and see what file the executable is trying to access, and what it's trying to do to it.
- fleitz 16y ago
  Yes most definitely, strace / truss have been absolute life savers. And if you are looking for something similar on Windows Process Monitor is excellent. You can also do a lot of DTrace style stuff with WMI and VBScript.
  - GFischer 16y ago
    The Windows equivalents would be the Sysinternal tools, I guess (Filemon, Procmon, etc..). http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals
stcredzero 16y ago
A cute goth daughter of a friend once squealed with delight when she saw another friend of mine (a NASA hacker) type 'monkey' into Terminal.app and cause some remote login magic to happen. Oh, the arcane magic of "alias." Then again, there have been times I've seen young people impressed by what amounts to "Row, your boat" played on an actual mandolin.
steveklabnik 16y ago
To be fair, many of us web programmers use the command line extensively. 75% of what I do is web work, and It's all written in vim, and often ssh-d into a server. I got my irssi running in a tmux session 24/7... Web programming has much more in line with systems work than most appreciate.

perlgeek 16y ago

For the non-web (and sometimes even for the web) programmer, strace can be a real life saver. An application complains about not being able to find a file, but doesn't report where it looked for it? strace can tell. Do you want to know why a system call failed, and the app is too crappy to report the error? strace to the rescue! Of course, if you're lucky you might even have access to dtrace...

mkjones 16y ago
This mostly-web programmer finds strace and (more often) ngrep (http://linux.die.net/man/8/ngrep http://linux.die.net/man/8/ngrep) to be some of the most useful tools out there for debugging errors both strange and mundane.
crux_ 16y ago
My favorite strace story: trying to get at the underlying causes of some "Unexpected Error" messages in ArcGIS, and it turns out it's writing helpful and useful (albeit two decades old) logging + error messages to the Windows equivalent of /dev/null. shakes fist @ ESRI HQ once again
khafra 16y ago
For me as a user, strace can be a real life saver. I'm not hep enough to the jive to read the source code and figure out what [incredibly uninformative error message regarding file access] means, but I can read strace output and see what file the executable is trying to access, and what it's trying to do to it.
fleitz 16y ago
Yes most definitely, strace / truss have been absolute life savers. And if you are looking for something similar on Windows Process Monitor is excellent. You can also do a lot of DTrace style stuff with WMI and VBScript.
- GFischer 16y ago
  The Windows equivalents would be the Sysinternal tools, I guess (Filemon, Procmon, etc..). http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals

stcredzero 16y ago

A cute goth daughter of a friend once squealed with delight when she saw another friend of mine (a NASA hacker) type 'monkey' into Terminal.app and cause some remote login magic to happen. Oh, the arcane magic of "alias." Then again, there have been times I've seen young people impressed by what amounts to "Row, your boat" played on an actual mandolin.

steveklabnik 16y ago

To be fair, many of us web programmers use the command line extensively. 75% of what I do is web work, and It's all written in vim, and often ssh-d into a server. I got my irssi running in a tmux session 24/7... Web programming has much more in line with systems work than most appreciate.