Ask HN: For those programming 10+ years, what do you wish you knew 4 years in?
Shell scripting (which will lead into Unix internals).  A lot of programming is automation and yak shaving, and shell is often the quickest tool to get past that.  It lets you get to the meat of the problem you&#x27;re actually solving.<p>Using the same tool for build, test automation, deployment, sys admin, refactoring, etc. is valuable.  Otherwise you are stuck with frothy and immature domain-specific tools that clutter your brain.<p>Shell is sort of universal in that C&#x2F;C++, Go, Python&#x2F;Ruby&#x2F;JavaScript, etc. programmers all use it.<p>It&#x27;s sort of like the idea of mastering a single editor.  You wouldn&#x27;t want to switch editors every year.  Likewise I think knowing shell and Unix really well pays off over the long haul.