Today as I looked up a YouTube API call for something in curl I
realized just how much cognitive overhead and time is saved by doing
everything in Bash first. The curl command I’m reading about, and all
the reminders about options and switches and syntax, all immediately and
directly improves my everyday needs to use curl for other things. Had
I done this little task in Go, Python, Perl or whatever else, it would
have improved my skills in that language, which is fine, but for so many
tasks like these knowing how to just get the minimum working from the
shell is far more valuable, at least to an operations/secops person like
me. I think I’ll call it “bash-first” workflow orientation, meaning, get
it working in Bash first, then later, if you actually need more consider
adding that. Not only will you complete those tasks more efficiently,
but you’ll complete other tasks more efficiently as well because you are
constantly working out the muscles needed for just about everything from
the command line, from vim filter utilities, to Dockerfiles, to other
quick and dirty API calls. Another way to express the “bash first” idea
is simply to follow the UNIX Philosophy, there’s a reason it is so
successful.