teaching_web_development

Matrix-style Terminal

Who does not like the movie The Matrix? The iconic green-on-black “digital rain” terminal has inspired generations of programmers.

Matrix Digital Rain

Plain Markdown fallback (works everywhere)

If the animated version won’t run on your platform, paste this static code block into your Markdown to show a “terminal-looking” snippet:

guest@neo:~$ whoami
guest
guest@neo:~$ echo "Welcome to command-line 101"
Welcome to command-line 101
guest@neo:~$ ls -la
total 32
-rw-r--r-- 1 guest staff  142 Dec 17  2025 README.md
drwxr-xr-x 6 guest staff  192 Dec 17  2025 lab1
guest@neo:~$ cat README.md
Learning the command line gives you superpowers: navigation, automation, debugging.

# Tips:
 - Start simple: cd, ls, cat, mkdir, rm (careful!)
 - Combine commands with pipes: grep, awk, sed
 - Use the terminal to automate repetitive tasks

guest@neo:~$

Command Line Starter Worksheet

Course: Web Development / Computing Fundamentals Level: 1st-year undergraduate Time: ~30–40 minutes

Motivation: Why the Command Line?

In films like The Matrix, hackers don’t click buttons — they talk directly to the computer. While real command-line work is less dramatic, it gives you powerful abilities:

In this worksheet, you’ll practise the core commands that underpin web development, servers, and deployment.

Setup (5 minutes)

Open a terminal:

You should see a prompt similar to:

username@computer:~$

Exercise 1: Who and Where Am I? (5 minutes)

Type the following commands, one at a time:

whoami
pwd

Questions:

  1. What username is printed?
  2. What directory are you currently in?
  3. What does ~ represent?

Exercise 2: Exploring Files and Folders (5 minutes)

Run:

ls
ls -l
ls -la

Questions:

  1. What changes when you add -l?
  2. What extra files appear with -a?
  3. What do file permissions (e.g. rw-r--r--) roughly mean?

Exercise 3: Creating Your First Project (10 minutes)

Create a folder for this course:

mkdir web-dev
cd web-dev

Now create a file:

echo "Hello, command line" > README.txt
cat README.txt

Questions:

  1. What does > do?
  2. What does cat stand for?
  3. Why might this be useful for web projects?

Exercise 4: Searching Like a Hacker (10 minutes)

Add more text:

echo "The command line gives you superpowers" >> README.txt
echo "Web servers love terminals" >> README.txt

Now search inside the file:

grep "command" README.txt

Questions:

  1. What lines are printed?
  2. What happens if you search for a word that doesn’t exist?
  3. How might this help when debugging code or logs?

Exercise 5: One-Line Superpowers (5 minutes)

Try this:

ls -la | grep README

curl https://www.example.com | grep "<title>"

wget -q -O - https://www.example.com | grep "<h1>"

Questions:

  1. What does the pipe symbol | do?
  2. How is this different from running the commands separately?
  3. Why is this powerful for automation?

Challenge (Optional)

Try to:

Hint: combine mkdir, cd, echo, and cat.

🚀

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