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.
Permalink for comment
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
As Arend pointed out, use the right tool for the right job.
I am surprised noone has mentioned Jef Raskin and The Humane Environment (THE).
THE is a command-line-esque environment which is very modular (like GNU apps in many ways) in it's ideology.
Raskin - who worked on the Macintoshes desktop metaphor environment - has later found that the desktop metaphor is far from the holy grail.
Instead he says that for some things, a text input control system (with more visual feedback than a simple command line) is much better suited than a mouse, and for some things (like drawing) a mouse is (obviously) far better than a keyboard.
The idea is that it shouldn't be necessary to reach for your mouse when using your keyboard, and that it shouldn't be necessary to reach for the keyboard when using the mouse.
This is - in principle - implemented in windows, since you can use the keyb only or the mouse only, but this is not what Raskin is talking about. Obviously, if you are going to get anything done in windows, you need to use both your keyboard and your mouse.
Raskin has created THE as a new type of interface.
http://humane.sourceforge.net/the/
Unfortunately I can't try it, since it's only available for Mac (last I looked at least). It sounds like a good idea though.
And to add my own $0.02 worth, I certainly agree that the CLI has a place in this world. It suffers from the flaw that you have to remember the commands, but in comparison with mousing around you can do a very wide range of tasks extremely fast without a bunch of mucking around.
I use the win-r shortcut in windows more than I use the start menu. I have a script dir in my path, and in that script dir I place shortcut scripts for all programs I use a lot. Then I can launch photoshop with win-r-PS-enter, which is a hell of a lot faster than trudging through the menus.
I also have a bloated Quicklaunch bar, but that quickly becomes uselessly cluttered.