Years ago I was doing customer support for a company that rented virtual private servers. There wasn’t enough technical staff so I started googling the answers to the customers problems, and following tutorials and instructions to fix their servers.
“I found that typing out the commands rather than copy-pasting them helps me remember them.”
Moreover, I found it’s not just about the ability to remember commands and their options. A large portion of the command line knowledge and confidence I’ve gained over the years was via mistyping commands. When you mistype a command, or type it from memory, if forces you to think about what the command is doing and what it’s options are said to be. It also gives you confidence about the safety and danger of various mistypings, (when you should be extremely careful, and when it’s ok to trial-and-error it.)
P.S. On note taking:
- My notes remain precisely coupled to changes in the command’s options – my notes are never out of date for one second.
- My notes can always be found in the time it takes to type “man command” – no searching through stacks of paperwork or electronic notes.