Next Witness M'Lud

I've come to the conclusion that Linux from the command line is like a lawyer questioning a witness in court. It's a matter of finding the correct question to get the answer you want without all the extra rambling. In court a lawyer can't ask a leading question, nor can they harass the witness. Some questions will be over-ruled or stricken from the record.

I am not a lawyer but I see the general idea in movies, TV shows and novels with court scenes. In the terminal one command may give you part of what you need but not all, while another command may give you other parts but not all. Some commands may need to be grep'd to only show the relevant parts, or need a flag added to provide some non-standard output. Some may need to be piped into another command to get the desired effect. This is just the same as a lawyer trying to find the correct question.

A GUI interface could be though of as a "lawyers for dummies" option where a lot of common questions are pre-prepared for you to use and may win your case if it's not too demanding, but it will run out of options if you need to get fancy and have to actually research your own questions. Luckily for us Linux users there's a few handy guides, perhaps the quickest and easiest is the man command. Another handy command is grep which sifts through the output for only what you want to show. Both of these links are to the Linux Command Directory site.

This epiphany has made me rethink how we look at IT skills. Putting it in the context of a digital lawyer somehow gives a more realistic level of depth involved in some subjects to be competent. It gives a new perspective on how new users can feel overwhelmed quite quickly if they're not willing to try and learn or are in an unhelpful place to be able to learn.

We already translate "normal" to "geek" in our heads, in the same way lawyers translate "normal" to "legalese" or doctors translate "normal" to "medical". In other words we listen to them describe the symptoms in terms they understand, and we translate them into terms we understand to be able to fix the issue. We then explain the fix in terms they understand by translating "geek" back into "normal". Sometimes we don't translate enough back into "normal" for some people to be able to grasp.

Imagine if your lawyer did that with legalese, you'd be left having to ask "what?" Remember "geek" is our job, not theirs. This may also account for a large part of why normal people are a lot less aware of issues like DRM and how it affects them as they should be. The explanation of DRM (or any other IT issue) often requires "geek" talk which most people just glaze over when they see it. We need to ensure that when we try to educate people that we speak their language. So the next time you feel a little overwhelmed, take heart, and know that you're as skilled as a lawyer or a doctor in your field. The next step is to get your boss to understand that and pay you accordingly.