Ode to the Command Line
Linked by David Adams on Fri 5th Aug 2011 16:08 UTC
Graphics, User Interfaces A couple of days ago I read a blog post by Stephen Ramsay, a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and a Fellow at the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities. In it, he mentions that he has all but abandoned the GUI and finds the command line to be "faster, easier to understand, easier to integrate, more scalable, more portable, more sustainable, more consistent, and many, many times more flexible than even the most well-thought-out graphical apps." I found this very thought-provoking, because, like Ramsay, I spend a lot of time thinking about "The Future of Computing," and I think that the CLI, an interface from the past, might have a place in the interface of the future.
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_txf_
Member since:
2008-03-17

Excellent example. When was the last time you *needed* to list all files sorted by modification time? Because I can't remember such a time.


I use it quite often. If you can't remember the name of the file but can remember the time you used it, then modification time helps. It even helps when you cannot remember exactly when you last used it by looking for it as an offset relative to a file that you do remember modifying.

Just because you don't use it, doesn't mean it isn't valid.

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