Preface

These guides are not done! Not remotely!

Welcome to CS at Reed! You'll be doing a lot of computer touching during your time here, and we wanted to put together some resources to make this as pleasant an experience as it can possibly be.

There are very many bits and pieces of software that you'll want to pick up and get used to along the way, but the vast majority of these tools can be unintuitive and frustrating. Here, we've collated a lot of words to hopefully make that experience easier.

This site covers a few core topics with copy-pastable snippets and explanations for reference, but if something isn't here, or if you just want some more information on anything, there are some really good resources on the broader internet. If you've got questions about how anything techy works, you might want to consult:

• Julia Evans! She's really good at writing zines.
• Anna Ritz (biology) directs her students to this command line bootcamp for a thorough, interactive guide to day-to-day terminal tasks.
• The Pro Git book provides a good, methodical explanation of Git.
• Zero to Nix describes the Nix package manager, a popular package manager for students here to use that's also installed on all of the Reednet machines.
• man pages :(

As a final introductory note, don't be afraid to ask for help. A lot of computer-touching knowledge is really just experience. The more times you see something, the more likely it'll be to click.

Also, if you have questions, yell at us! Issues pertaining to this guide can be sent to GitHub issues, and, along with more general questions, can be emailed to us.

If you want to help us write guides, let us know! If you're familiar with git, we also accept contributions through the guides repository.