Linked by Greg Afinogenov on Wed 3rd Sep 2003 07:19 UTC
It is not fashionable nowadays to speak of the merits of the command line, in an age where things like streaming video and Aqua are an integral part of our daily life. However, I do not think that typed-in commands must necessarily be consigned to the dustbin of computer history. Of course, I am not suggesting that we all drop X and Windows and pretend like we are living in the early eighties. The command line interface still has much to offer us, and many of its benefits simply cannot physically be emulated or even replaced by graphical ones.
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As a general overview the article is quite fair. What I think is the most important point, and one the author touches upon, are the issues relating to availability, usability, and usefulness. For example, with Linux we have a high degree of GUI availability, medium level of usability, and low level of usefulness, as far as the average user is concerned. An interesting comment made in another thread touched on the relative popularity of BeOS versus Linux in Japan, for these same reasons. The issue raised by this is who is designing what for whom. CLI's are inappropriate for the majority of users who just want to get stuff done. I'm also of a mind that too much systems administration is CLI bound. Perhaps it's time to move beyond the CLI versus GUI debate and start building systems that don't need the CLI.