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Brian P. Hogan: Editorial Manager for DigitalOcean, Author of Small, Sharp, Software Tools: Harness the Combinatoric Power of Command-Line Tools and Utilities, teacher, student, and musician. More info at bphogan.com.

Developers use a variety of tools other than their programming language to get their jobs done. This week, we talk about those tools with Brian Hogan, an Editorial Manager for DigitalOcean. Brian's a prolific technical educator, writer, and editor and he's currently the author of the book Small, Sharp, Software Tools from the Pragmatic Press. We talk about why command line tools in particular are important, what command line tools do well, and why some people including myself often find them opaque and confusing. We talk about our favorite tools and about customizing your workflow to fit your needs.

02:33 - Benefits to being comfortable on the Command Line Interface (CLI)

09:43 - Concepts that people struggle with and don’t internalize

11:13 - ‘awk’ and ‘sed’ defined

14:48 - The Ethos of Cargo Culting Information

20:02 - Reminding Yourself to Use Tools and Shortcuts

27:31 - Benefit to Setup/Cost Ratio

30:28 - Differences in Tools on Different Machines and Operating Systems

32:52 - Tools You Should Know Better

37:29 - Practice as Continuous Improvement

Special Guest: Brian Hogan.