Can we talk about using an IDE before learning the command line?

I keep seeing new folks jump straight into VS Code and never touch a terminal, but when they hit a deployment issue on a $5 DigitalOcean droplet they freeze up. Last week a friend asked me why their Node app worked locally but not on the server, and it came down to them not knowing basic ssh or ls. Is it better to force beginners through 2 weeks of pure terminal work first, or am I just being old school about this?

2 comments

2 Comments

taylorlewis18d ago

Honestly? I used to be on the other side of this. I thought, let people learn with what's fun, VS Code feels approachable, terminal feels like yelling at a wall. But then I watched a guy spend three hours on a deployment because he didn't know `cd` worked differently on a server... and yeah, your `ls` and `ssh` point hit me. I think two weeks of pure terminal is extreme, but at least a weekend of forced command line basics would save a lot of tears later.

parkerh3818d ago

Wait, you actually convinced me on that, @taylorlewis? Yeah, ok, maybe I was wrong.