Two pieces of advice: Read "horror stories", like a crazy bug introduced by an innocent commit, or how forgetting a single line of code can lead to a massive s

Two pieces of advice: Read "horror stories", like a crazy bug introduced by an innocent commit, or how forgetting a single line of code can lead to a massive security breach. This will give you some "subconscious awareness" about the power of the tools you are using. Pre-emptively prevent yourself from making mistakes. If you know you often misuse some command, just make it ask you for confirmation: function confirm() { echo -n "Continue? (Y/N) " read YN return $([ "$YN" = "Y" ]) } alias rm="confirm&&rm" You could even consider more elaborate checks, like GMail's "Mail Goggles" [1]. [1] http://gmailblog.blogspot.nl/2008/10/new-in-labs-stop-sending-mail-you-later.html http://gmailblog.blogspot.nl/2008/10/new-in-labs-stop-sendin...