Computer literacy¶
File systems¶
Need to understand the concept of how files are organized on a computer file system. Important concepts include:
What is a file path? What is the difference between a relative and an absolute path?
What does “case sensitive” mean?
Resources:
Files¶
Need to understand the different types of files that can exist on a computer, and how to work with them. Important concepts include:
Text vs. binary files
Different types of text files (e.g. comma-separated vs tab-separated)
Command line¶
Need to understand how to access the command line interface on one’s computer and how to use it to perform operations. Important concepts include:
Moving around the file system
Working with files and directories (creating, removing, moving)
Editing text files¶
It is very useful to know how to edit text files from the command line.
All of these require learning of somewhat unintuitive key combinations for various operations, so it’s useful to keep a cheat sheet handy
On UNIX-like systems (Mac OS, Linux) popular alternatives include:
If you want to see geeks getting into religious wars, Google “vim vs emacs”