I wish this book had been out 4 years ago before I started working in a NOC (Network Operations Center). So far, I've been very impressed with the layout and information contained in this book. The command line switches are very detailed yet, this information would be a great reference for somebody starting out as long as they have a system in front of them to experiment with. Even an old $200 computer would work!

I'm a computer science student but I have not previously focused much on shell scripting, but this book has greatly aided me in:
- understanding the history of command line interfaces and exactly what the Linux terminals are emulating
- the basics of the major shells
- administrating a Linux system with shell scripts

I find myself referencing this book more often then the textbook I was assigned for class.