To me the main argument for getting used to the shell is that it's a compounding investment. Sure, initially one would be slower using a shell driven workflow a

To me the main argument for getting used to the shell is that it's a compounding investment. Sure, initially one would be slower using a shell driven workflow as opposed to someone using an IDE. However, the more you stick to it, the more you find out that the skills you've gathered are very transferable and are applicable across languages, projects, types of projects, tasks, types of work, and even whole industries. If you know the shell well and are well versed in a good CLI text editor such as Vim or Emacs, the programming language of the day doesn't matter. Whether you're coding or setting up some environment doesn't matter. Whether you're on your computer, connected to some server, or an embedded device doesn't matter. EDIT: And eventually, you're not slower than someone using an IDE either.