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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Why do most articles like this concentrate on old CLIs? Some ppl have had really bad times with things like dos, but the world isn't like that any more. Modern non-gui programs are well designed and work well. Mutt, vi, bash - they all beat their gui counterparts hands down.
> - Switching virtual terminals is a poor replacement for
> switching windows,
Rubbish. Have you never used screen?
Of course, there is still the place for guis. When you don't really know what you're doing and are only going to do it once, they're great. Some of the gnome system tools are great. I use openoffice instead of gnuplot since I rarely have to use it. It's just a shame that so many ppl suffer with guis because they can't be bothered spending a few minutes to get started with the non-gui alternatives. It's a one time hit, not like the continuous pain of how much effort and time it takes for people to do things with windows explorer and gui email programs.