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| Type | Master's Thesis |
| Scope | Discipline-based scholarship |
| Title | CLI-Tutor: Can interactive learning make the command line more approachable? |
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| Institution | University of Zurich |
| Faculty | Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics |
| Date | 2022 |
| Abstract Text | Despite the arguably dated appearance, difficult learning curve and practical non-existence in the modern personal computing space, Command Line Interfaces (CLIs) have more than stood the test of time in the software development world. There are a multitude of extremely popular tools and applications that primarily focus on the command line as an interaction medium. Some examples include version control software like git, compilers and interpreters for programming languages, package managers and various core utilities that are popular in areas such as software development, scripting and system administration. Command line interfaces are also utilised in areas outside of software development. For example, the infamous Bloomberg Terminal in the financial sector and in general computing applications such as email e.g. mutt, neomutt and text editing e.g. Vim, Neovim, Wordstar. As mentioned before, the use of the command line as an interaction paradigm has effectively disappeared from a mainstream personal computer usage perspective. This reality contributes greatly to the intimidation factor and learning difficulty for those interested in getting into software engineering or system administration. This unfamiliarity, paired with the inevitability of usage of CLIs in the development space, highlights a need to make the command line more accessible to new users for whom text-based interaction with their computer is an alien concept. In recent years, interactive learning tools utilising features such as sandboxed environments have been gaining in popularity and have the potential to be a suitable medium for learning command line basics through actual usage, examples and practise. In this work, we have created just such an interactive tutoring tool tailored for the command line. CLI-Tutor is a forgiving CLI application that aims to teach topics such as shell basics and Unix-like core utility usage through the use of guided lessons with interactive examples and feedback. |
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