You will type kubectl thousands of times. Three shortcuts save most of the typing.

Short names

Every kind has a short name. These are the ones you already know:

learner@shallows:~$ kubectl get po -n shop

The full list is in the cluster. api-resources prints every kind with its short name, its API version, and whether it lives in a namespace:

learner@shallows:~$ kubectl api-resources
NAME         SHORTNAMES   APIVERSION   NAMESPACED   KIND
namespaces   ns           v1           false        Namespace
nodes        no           v1           false        Node
pods         po           v1           true         Pod

You can also ask for several kinds at once:

learner@shallows:~$ kubectl get po,no

The k alias

Almost everyone shortens kubectl to k:

learner@shallows:~$ alias k=kubectl
learner@shallows:~$ k get po -A

The alias lasts for this shell. Chapter 12 of Linux Essentials shows how to keep one. This course writes kubectl in full so that every line is copyable; use k whenever you type by hand.

--help

Every verb explains its own flags:

learner@shallows:~$ kubectl get --help
learner@shallows:~$ kubectl run --help

It is faster than a search, and it matches the version you are running. When a lab asks for a flag you half remember, --help first.