The ability to read and write. Competence or knowledge in a particular area.
The ability to understand and make informed decisions about money — budgeting, investing, debt.
The ability to reason with numbers and apply mathematical concepts in everyday situations.
Enough comfort with the command line that competent oversight of digital agents becomes a reliable skill.
Why now?
Coding agents, chat-driven development, AI-assisted workflows — they all run shell commands under the hood. The more abstracted your tools become, the more valuable it is to understand the layer they're operating on.
Pipes, files, processes, text streams — unchanged since the 1970s. Every few years a new paradigm arrives that promises to replace the command line. Each one adds a layer. None has removed the one underneath.
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