Welcome quotes in Terminal

The other day I was in a total mess, running into multiple errors after trying to adapt a big code-base to my needs. After talking with my CTO, he told me "proceed step by step", no need to rush and to implement everything on the first shot.

Therefore I proceeded step by step and succeeded where I failed before. Starting small and then adding features. Easier to implement, easier to debug, faster progress.

I write it down on a post-it, tied to my screen. "Step by Step".

Few days later, here we go again, errors everywhere I was getting lost. I learnt "Go back to a working state", then proceed step by step. Another post-it added to my screen.

I gave a presentation to raise awareness about Internet security & Privacy, and I find back this sentence from E. Snowden:
"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."

I decided to add those messages to my terminal, to read a nice and important quote every time I open a terminal (quite often).

Putting the following script in .bashrc or .zshrc will print a random emoji and a random sentence whenever I open a new terminal prompt.

# Fancy welcome message
emojis=("🎯" "🏹" "🚀")
expressions=(
        "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."
        "Step by step."
        "Keep it simple."
        "It doesn't work? Come back to a working state.")
RANDOM1=$$$(date +%s)
RANDOM2=$$$(date +%s)
selectedexpression=${expressions[$RANDOM1 % ${#expressions[@]} +1]}
selectedemoji=${emojis[$RANDOM2 % ${#emojis[@]} +1]}
echo "\n  ${selectedemoji} \"${selectedexpression}\"\n"

Here is the github gist.

Output:

 🎯 "Step by step."

╭─aster@f-laptop ~
╰─$

Do not forget to run source ~/.zshrc to apply it!

Feels free to add your favorite quotes/emojis :)

Original blog post here.