In my work I have always to go from one computer to another one (to analyse software problems). Sometimes I need to ask a developer to come on site to give a lo

In my work I have always to go from one computer to another one (to analyse software problems). Sometimes I need to ask a developer to come on site to give a look to the behaviour of its code. It occurs very often that very good developers are completely lost when they arrive on a computer where all their marvellous customizations and shortcuts are missing. Many developer are always on the same environment. They can use their own tailored tools and may not need many of the basic unix knowledge. I think that good practices should be encouraged. The good practices improve the skill of people and reduce the costs at the society level. The basic knowledge of unix tool has an exponential rewarding effect (by learning a couple of new tips, you can solve many new needs). This tool facilitates the avoidance of these good practices. I do not like people ignorance and I favour knowledge. I do not like losing time (except on HN) and I favour speed. I admit, this is a personal opinion. We do not have much time to learn everything. I think the time spend learning "replace" should better be spend learning "sed". Try to use sed each time it is not longer than opening a text editor and doing a find and replace manually. This way you will not lose your skill. Ack is not a basic tool you have chosen to avoid learning grep. All the basic options of grep are the same in ack. As a result you will not loose skill by using ack.