Programming is best learned by doing. The emphasis in this course is not on the lectures (slides only). The students will need to search information independently, to find the answers to the questions in the lecture material and in the exercises. This reflects more accurately the situation in which the skills are needed in practice. After students have proposed different answers and solutions, we discuss about them together.
Having access to a Linux terminal is mandatory for solving the exercises, and very useful for answering the more general questions, too.
Independent does not mean alone, quite the opposite. Please answer the questions in the lecture notes and do the exercises together in small groups and/or use the course discussion forum to exchange ideas and ask for help. The lecturers follow the forum too, to comment and help when needed.
Some of the questions and exercises may be really hard. In the worst case they require you to read lecturers mind. This is a feature. If you get stuck, start a thread in the discussion forum, and go to the next question or exercise. Return to the hard problem when you get some help on how to proceed.
Important: Your answers and solutions don’t need to be perfect – shell scripts rarely are, in reality. It is as helpful to figure out what goes wrong with a misbehaving script as to study perfect scripts.
Even more important: Be brave to ask questions, and help your fellow’s when they get stuck.