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Command Line Basics

A free beginner course that gets you comfortable in the terminal, taught by Ajo Borgvold across about 1.7 hours of practical, hands-on lessons.

Quick answer​

This is Scrimba's free, beginner-level command line course, about 1.7 hours taught by Ajo Borgvold. You learn the essential terminal skills every developer needs: navigating the filesystem, creating and moving files, and using the command line to automate small tasks. It is foundational dev tooling, the kind of thing worth doing before git, Node, or any backend work, and it assumes no prior experience.

Is it worth your time?​

The command line is one of those skills that pays off everywhere. Git, deployment, package managers, and backend tooling all assume you can move around a terminal, and learners who skip it tend to hit walls later that feel mysterious until you realise they are just CLI gaps. At under two hours and free, this course is a cheap way to close that gap before it slows you down.

The honest caveat is that it is genuinely a basics course. It covers the fundamentals and a handful of power tools well, but it will not turn you into a shell scripting expert or cover advanced topics like complex pipelines, environment management, or writing real automation scripts. Take it as the foundation it is meant to be.

What you'll learn​

Course curriculum

2 modules

  1. Command Line Fundamentals46 min
  2. Command Line Power Tools57 min

The two modules split cleanly. Fundamentals covers the core: moving through directories, listing and inspecting files, and creating, copying, moving, and deleting things from the terminal instead of a file browser. Power Tools builds on that with the commands that start to save you real time, the kind of shortcuts and utilities that make the command line faster than clicking. Together they get you from intimidated to fluent in the basics.

Who it's for, and who should skip it​

It fits complete beginners and anyone self-taught who has been getting by without the terminal and keeps tripping over it. It is a sensible early stop for beginners and for CS students who want practical fluency to match the theory.

Skip it if you already live in the terminal and write shell scripts comfortably; there is little new here for you. Otherwise, even a quick run through is worthwhile insurance.

Prerequisites​

None. No prior programming or terminal experience is required. A computer with a terminal and a willingness to type commands are all you need.

Where it fits​

This course is a standalone foundation rather than a named path member, but it underpins almost everything that comes after. It pairs directly with Learn Git and Github, which assumes terminal comfort, and it smooths the way into backend work like Learn Node.js.

Free or Pro​

The course is free, with no subscription needed to start or finish it. Scrimba Pro is a separate decision that unlocks the structured career paths, coding challenges, and certificates. If you only want this course, you never have to pay.

Strengths and limits​

What it does well: it is free, short, and beginner-friendly, and it teaches a skill that quietly unlocks git, deployment, and backend tooling. The two-module structure moves from fundamentals to genuinely useful shortcuts.

Where it is limited: it stops at the basics, so advanced shell scripting and automation are out of scope, and fast peer help depends on the Pro Discord rather than the free tier.

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