Honestly, from the sound of it you just hadn't been paying attention over the years as you were learning all of the commands, it seems like Google is your go to

Honestly, from the sound of it you just hadn't been paying attention over the years as you were learning all of the commands, it seems like Google is your go to tool of choice. I've been there, and I had to stop myself. The fastest way to learn something is the hard way using the man pages, as looking up the same argument to a program over and over is going to get it stuck in your head much faster than anything else. At least for me, I will qualify the previous statement with that. I too have written countless of scripts to do meaningless tasks, it is one of the reasons why I became a computer programmer, I'd rather spend 2 hours writing a script that works in all corner and edge cases and never have to do the same menial task again than spend the 30 minutes it would normally take to just finish the problem (knowing that it would most likely come up again, and it would once again take me 30 minutes ...). The thing is that certain things should start to sink in even while using scripts. I have scripts to set up an entire FreeBSD system in under 30 minutes with custom software deployed, configured and running, but if it ever doesn't work right I know exactly how to fix it because I know all of the steps in that script. -- It comes down to some rote memorisation and the rest becomes ingrained to the point that you can yell the commands across a cubicle to your colleague. I recently learned git inside and out, and now have no problem while standing next to a co-worker dictating exactly what they need to type to get it to do what needs to be done. I'm the same way with FreeBSD system administration (Linux not so much, but I can find my way around an Debian and Ubuntu box). I started playing with Linux and FreeBSD when FreeBSD 4.6.2 was released (I ran an open email relay on my home cable box at age 13 (I am now 22), by mistake). Some of the things you have mentioned in your blog post are some of the simplest concepts of Linux.