Comments about O'Reilly Media Great Bash:

Carl Albing's "Great Bash" by O'Reilly Media is a collection of several short video lessons on the basics of the shell programming.

I watch the "Great Bash" lessons hoping to learn more about shell programming, but unfortunately Carl Albing's video lessons are too introductory (IMHO).

It was nevertheless great to recap many things I learned here and there, and so my time watching it was not wasted at all, but I would recommend this video only to shell programmer beginners.

There are also some (really) minor defects in the technical way the video is recorded: the audio quality may be improved and sometimes the speaker take some long inexplicable pauses. But, that said, the overall quality is really good.

In the end I recommend to watch this video if you are a shell programmer beginner and you want to start understanding more about this topic.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Great Bash:

This was an easy to follow, yet comprehensive BASH scripting tutorial with a wealth of information not easily found in other tutorials I've looked at. Couple that with the screencast format and you have a winner. My initial review of this product was that it was incomplete and overpriced. It turns out that I only had a quarter of the material since it was still being produced. Now that I have all of the material I can safely say that it is well worth the price. I would definitely recommend this product to anyone looking for an easy way to beef up their BASH skills. There were a couple of screencast blunders where the title of a segment said something about "Great Javascript" instead of "Great Bash" but the content itself was intact and on target.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Great Bash:

I was given free access to a review copy of this set of videos a while ago, but I held off on actually reviewing it because it seemed very likely that they hadn't quite posted the entire thing yet. The rest has been added now, so I can go ahead and talk about it without worrying about it being incomplete!

Bash is both probably the most popular shell for most Linux and Unix and similar systems, and also a scripting language that's used with the shell. This set of videos focuses on the scripting part by taking you through all of the major topics that you need to write a Bash script.

You'll have a much easier time of it if you already have some comfort with the basic principles of working on the command line. He touches very briefly on what regular shell commands do as they come up, but command line novices aren't the target audience here and will probably be overwhelmed by how much information they would need to absorb.

The nice thing about these videos is that you're hearing his explanations of why he's doing everything as it happens along with the chance to see all of the interaction that's happening with the shell and how it responds at each step. There are good written tutorials of Bash out there for free, so watching these definitely isn't necessary for learning shell scripting. Still, if your learning style leans more toward the auditory and visual, Great Bash will be a great resource in making the topic understandable.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Great Bash:

The shell is a user interface on a Unix type operating system. It allows the user to communicate with the system via the keyboard and the display. The shell is where the magic happens when it comes to getting the most from a Unix, Linux, or Mac operating system. Bash is an acronym for the Bourne Again Shell. Using shell scripts can automate many tasks when it comes to working with files and data. The video, Great Bash, by Carl Albing will have you writing shell scripts from the beginning, with increasing complexity as the video progresses.

I found this video to be very helpful in learning the basics of shell scripting. The video demonstrates scripting and it's expected or sometimes unexpected outputs. Starting with basic commands the video takes the viewer through decision making and variables. Script flow control, input, output and redirection are explained. I started and stopped the video many times as I worked through the examples. I would recommend this video as an accompaniment to books on the subject of Bash scripting.

Disclosure: I received a free copy for review purposes.

Comments about O'Reilly Media Great Bash:

We will learn good stuff from Carl Albing.
It's simple and helpful for someone who begin bash shell programming.