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Learner Reviews & Feedback for The Unix Workbench by Johns Hopkins University

4.7
stars
1,320 ratings

About the Course

Unix forms a foundation that is often very helpful for accomplishing other goals you might have for you and your computer, whether that goal is running a business, writing a book, curing disease, or creating the next great app. The means to these goals are sometimes carried out by writing software. Software can’t be mined out of the ground, nor can software seeds be planted in spring to harvest by autumn. Software isn’t produced in factories on an assembly line. Software is a hand-made, often bespoke good. If a software developer is an artisan, then Unix is their workbench. Unix provides an essential and simple set of tools in a distraction-free environment. Even if you’re not a software developer learning Unix can open you up to new methods of thinking and novel ways to scale your ideas. This course is intended for folks who are new to programming and new to Unix-like operating systems like macOS and Linux distributions like Ubuntu. Most of the technologies discussed in this course will be accessed via a command line interface. Command line interfaces can seem alien at first, so this course attempts to draw parallels between using the command line and actions that you would normally take while using your mouse and keyboard. You’ll also learn how to write little pieces of software in a programming language called Bash, which allows you to connect together the tools we’ll discuss. My hope is that by the end of this course you be able to use different Unix tools as if they’re interconnecting Lego bricks....

Top reviews

SM

May 24, 2022

This course is extremly helpful and well designed for beginnner and working professionals with neat info. I strongly recomended this course. Thanks for mentors/authors with real time example commands.

RW

Apr 29, 2020

This is a very friendly step-by-step guide to Unix for beginners, it helps to build a solid foundation, and the exercises are designed to explore more about what has been introduced in the course.

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326 - 350 of 397 Reviews for The Unix Workbench

By Christina H

Jun 1, 2020

I took this class as a refresher on the basics of Unix, having not used a shell in over 10 years. I found this to be well organized, easy to follow, and user friendly. It also felt like just the right amount of work per week. The text did contain some typos, but I wonder if that was to encourage people to edit it. The forums were helpful, but I do think moderators need to consider that people come from all abilities and background and sometimes some plain speak is appreciated.

By Richard S

Oct 10, 2017

This course offers a wide range of topics for an entry-level course on UNIX/Linux. From user-type tasks (navigating the tree, manipulating files, etc), to programming-related ones (using make/makefiles, git, GitHub, etc), this course gives the learner enough knowledge to assess whether they want to continue with more advanced UNIX/Linux courses, or pursue some other area of knowledge.

By Achuthan R V

May 20, 2020

I would have preferred more video classes to explain the tools as opposed to texts. Further, separate modules on the vi editor, sed and awk utilities could have also been included as part of the course content. The exercises were good but an extra peer-reviewed assignment (on other Week 3 topics) would have been helpful.

By Juan C G V

Jun 30, 2020

Very good course on Linux focused on the development of bash scripts as part of a developer's toolbox. Instructor had developed a book to support it. You will find the basics to start working as a part of a development team using Git and GitHub. Definitely enjoyable. Thank you to all the people that makes this possible.

By Huajun Z

Jan 16, 2018

It's a very useful course, and helped me to code some simple bash programs, without which my current project would be very laborious. A small piece of suggestion is that content for each week can be further optimized, as the week3 and week4 contents are a bit too much, and week1 is a bit too little.

By John H

Aug 24, 2017

Well paced intro to shell scripting and bash. Could use a little more video and discussion beyond the "text" for the module. However, this is early in the life of the course so perhaps these can be added.

It would be good to have a follow-up module with more make, Git and other areas! Thanks.

By Andrew B

Jan 29, 2022

Certainly better than the other Unix- and Linux-related courses which always appear to explain the very basics regardless of how "advanced" they claim to be. It took a long time to find peer-reviewed assignments to review but the content of the course was decent.

By Enpei L

Apr 11, 2019

I chose to take this course as reading manuals is boring. The course is nice in the sense that it gives practicals that you can do and get yourself familiar with the commands. On the other side, the videos are not what I expected and not so useful to have anyways.

By GAUTAM K

Dec 23, 2017

It was very good course designed for beginner in Unix. Thanks a lot for this. I was expecting a good hands on assignment at each week. The course could be much better if it would have included some more details in all the topics covered.

By Rob C

Sep 10, 2018

Really interesting course and a good introduction to shell programming. I did find the learning curve was a little uneven between weeks (1 and 2 were took almost no time, but some quirks in week 3 made it take much longer).

By Dimitris H

Feb 11, 2022

It's a nice course that provides you with the basics. I wish the content was updated in more frequent manner. It would be nice to be able to submit and run scripts online as the method for verifying the assignements.

By Sougata G

Dec 18, 2017

Fantastic book for beginners as well as people who haven't worked on Unix for a long time. Brush up and get going. Very lucid presentation ; gitHub lessons were an additional plus

By Carla C S

Oct 6, 2021

This course is a quick introduction to the Unix shell and bash scripting. Very advisable indeed, nevertheless I think they could show you correct answers of practice excercises.

By Sara A

Oct 11, 2018

A very good course!

Before taking this course, I was a little worried to work with Linux. But now I really feel more comfortable with it.

Thanks to the instructor for his efforts.

By Edgardo S

Apr 22, 2018

I could not get the connection with digitalocean, becasue the page requested me to pay. I suggest to use a server propietary of coursera only for courses.

By Kyösti P

Mar 10, 2019

Excellent introductory course in to Unix and utilizing some of the basic command line functions as well as some of the progarmming structure basics.

By Kirulkar R B

Feb 20, 2018

I learn so many new commands from this course.

and one more important thing is basic standard skeleton of bash programming as well as git-hub basic.

By Sergio A D A

Oct 21, 2023

good content but sometimes it is quite complicate to follow instructions when using Windows. tThere are not specifications when using this OS

By roger c

Oct 29, 2017

It's very simple bash (my attention part!) tutorials, and I suggest the video teaching is much better than boring plain text.

By bikarna p

Apr 12, 2020

I enjoyed the course. However, I would have enjoyed still more, if there were demos using videos rather than mere texts.

By thejas

Aug 30, 2020

A great course that is easy to understand and implement it. A good start for beginners with little experience.

By Sai K G B

Aug 12, 2020

Could have been little crisp and more live demos if possible...Overall a very good course for the beginners

By Abhishek k

Jan 31, 2019

This course good for beginners...and helpful for learning git, linux bash shell and git.Thanks

By Francisco A d A e L

Oct 16, 2017

Excelent course! I am very fluent in R but never tried Unix. This was the perfect opportunity.

By Dharmesh S

Mar 3, 2018

The course is good for anyone trying to learn basics of UNIX and especially the GIT command