Earlier I wrote about custom files for the fortune command in Linux. Before that, I gave a glowing review of The Pragmatic Programmer. Today I’m releasing a package that puts pragmatic programming tips in the fortune database.

The pragmatic tips come directly from the book, and were obtained here. They represent the main ideas and principles proposed by the authors.

Download the compressed file here. Then, from the terminal, run the following commands to install:

tar -xvf pragmatic_tips.tar.gz
sudo cp pragmatic_tips* /usr/share/games/fortunes

The command ‘fortune pragmatic_tips_short’ displays the title of a randomly selected pragmatic programmer tip. Calling ‘fortune pragmatic_tips_long’ will print the title of a random tip along with its description.

Add one of these commands to your ~/.bashrc file for a bit of inspiration and wisdom each time you open a new terminal window!