If programming is magic, then the old languages are strong

The similarity between magic and programming is never more apparent than
when you sit down and watch someone who is truly good on the command line.
By virtue of having secret knowledge they can quickly accomplish the
apparently impossible. If you start out in the unix world you begin by
learning some simple incantations such as 'cd', 'ls' and 'top' and 'kill'.
If you persevere with the art eventually you may master the hidden runes
that bring 'sed' and 'awk' to life.

These sorts of commands work at the very root of the operating system, hard
wired into the c++ code that built up the universe in which you are walking.
In a way this is the fundamental elemental magic of programming. And what I
find so pleasant about wandering in this landscape is that finding
documentation on these building blocks is so easy. They have been around for
such a long time that much of the documentation was written when blue links,
plain text and white backgrounds were not just a style issue for html, there
was simply no better way to do it back then.

I often think that there is still no better way to do it.

tags: programming, magic