Linked by Richard Wareham on Mon 8th Mar 2004 20:49 UTC
This essay describes the surprising results of a brief trial with a group of new computer users about the relative ease of the command line interface versus the GUIs now omnipresent in computer interfaces. It comes from practical experience I have of teaching computing to complete beginners or newbies as computer power-users often term them.
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Interesting, and perhaps even true. The article doesn't compare with users that use their computer creativily. Personally I don't give squad about newbies, so I'm a different target audience, I must say that in front.
Every tasks: video editing, music making, Photoshoppin', etc has a GUI and it's damn neccessary too. It's a metaphor for real uses. Photoshop has the canvas, a music program has columns, music 'pages' or with audio processing, a visual representation of a synth (input/output/connectors).
So it depends. Controlling a computer may be more simple with a CLI for beginners, but actually *USING* software requires a GUI, because it works faster, and you need a customisable workflow.