Hailing from Trivandrum, I found it a bit uneasy in Calicut, mainly because of the difference in dialects, and obviously not being "handicapped". Nevertheless i pushed on forward. This is my take on the first week at Lycaeum
After a short Introduction from Mr. Noufal Ibrahim, we were given reading materials for our brains to indulge in. As per guidelines, we were to finish UNIX Programming within the first 4 weeks.
We started our journey into Unix Programming, the book we were referred to was 'The UNIX Programming Environment ' by Brain W. Kernighan.
After painstakingly installing and successfully running Debian 9 in my machine (had problems with missing wireless-network driver, basic apt-get malfunction. etc). it was time to get started.
The first few Chapters comprised of the basic building blocks of UNIX that are very useful to make yourself productive. I'll list a few of these commands below:
ls -List out names in current Directory
emacs or mousepad - Opens respective text editor
cat -prints the contents of the specified file
mv/cp/rm -move/copy/remove a specified file
wc -displays the number of lines,words,characters are present in a text file
grep -searches a file for words that have a specified pattern
sort -sorts the file (the command is case sensitive)
man -open the terminal manual for better understanding of the command
cmp -Used to compare any two files
mkdir -Make Directory
cd -Change Directory
| -Pipe, putting an output of one program as the input of the other program
And many more. Most of these commands can have arguments, that helps the user to tweak the usage of a particular command Eg: -i, -t, -f ,-v etc.
I also got a bit more clarity on the file system structure, the directory hierarchy, root access or super-user access, permissions on the file systems and a better understanding of how to use the Shell.
We were also introduced to SSH (Secure Shell) for logging into a remote machine and to execute commands. We were given accounts such as xxxx@students.thelycaeum.in. I got to learn the use of key-pairs (public key and private key) and how to create a generic key-pair, by using the command ' ssh-keygen -t rsa ' and also a general idea on symmetric and asymmetric encryption. Even though i tried to install certain applications such as emacs into the ssh'd machine, i quickly learned that it needed administrator access.
As this week passed by like a storm, my uneasiness washed away and I feel more focused and more motivated to push forward.
Stay tuned, for the journey has just begun.