I embarrassed myself in front of a principal engineer because I couldn’t write a Bash script.

The lesson he taught me was super valuable. I’ve written on this blog before about scratchpads — scraps of code that can run your production code rapidly. Scratchpads are a big key to quick feedback loops and fast iteration. When you tighten feedback loops, you make yourself a better developer. I usually write my scratchpad scripts in Python. It’s what I’m most familiar with, so it’s usually fastest. This week — pairing with a principal engineer — I learned the power of a Bash scratchpad. Along they way, I embarrassed myself with how little I knew about writing shell scripts. <h1>Why Bash?</h1> The syntax is kind of arcane and there are many gotchas. Why write a script in Bash that could easily be written in Python? <a href="https://blog.developerpurpose.com/i-embarrassed-myself-in-front-of-a-principal-engineer-because-i-couldnt-write-a-bash-script-cd84931f5b22">Website</a>