If someone wants to work in a root shell, I think it's fine provided they understand the damage they can potentially do. It could certainly be possible to habitually prepend commands with sudo, particularly if you need to type many of them.
Though certainly it's safer to do some tasks as non-root as well, such as compiling software, then switch to root/sudo to install it. Just remember to double/triple check each command you type in a root shell or after the sudo command. Particularly when using commands such as rm with arguments such as -rf!
Sudo also does provide some extra flexibility when you are delegating tasks to someone who doesn't necessarily need full root access.
Though certainly it's safer to do some tasks as non-root as well, such as compiling software, then switch to root/sudo to install it. Just remember to double/triple check each command you type in a root shell or after the sudo command. Particularly when using commands such as rm with arguments such as -rf!
Sudo also does provide some extra flexibility when you are delegating tasks to someone who doesn't necessarily need full root access.