Terminals do make more sense, if you know all the commands. And I must admit, “say the magic words and the computer does the thing” is pretty neat and makes me feel powerful.
it also means that there’s a smooth transition between doing a thing once and doing it a 1000 times (or otherwise automating it), because you’ve got a programming language right there already. no need to look for a “mass-x gui tool” for each x.
oh, and i think (though i have no actual experience with this) that it’s a lot easier to make terminals friendly for disabled people (blind, etc)
The CLI is also a much more reliable environment to provide instructions on how to do something.
Instructing people to click on “this button > tab > menu > submenu > item” is very exhausting for both instructor and reader, it’s language-dependant and less future-proof. Also sometimes the location of some graphic elements isn’t immediately obvious and there are cases where the only way to make sure people understand it is with a video tutorial of sorts. Which is annoying both to make and to have to sit and watch through.
This also makes the CLI better at reporting/diagnosing problems… for a GUI app, if you want to report a bug you have to write down a bible of steps on what things you clicked on, etc. (again, a video ultimately is needed to make things clear). Whereas a CLI app has all that information already in the parameters so you can just provide that as the report (along with any input/output data). Or simply copy the contents of your terminal.
hah, using language to interface with the computer is for idiots, pointing and grunting is the superior method!
Terminals do make more sense, if you know all the commands. And I must admit, “say the magic words and the computer does the thing” is pretty neat and makes me feel powerful.
it also means that there’s a smooth transition between doing a thing once and doing it a 1000 times (or otherwise automating it), because you’ve got a programming language right there already. no need to look for a “mass-x gui tool” for each x.
oh, and i think (though i have no actual experience with this) that it’s a lot easier to make terminals friendly for disabled people (blind, etc)
The CLI is also a much more reliable environment to provide instructions on how to do something.
Instructing people to click on “this button > tab > menu > submenu > item” is very exhausting for both instructor and reader, it’s language-dependant and less future-proof. Also sometimes the location of some graphic elements isn’t immediately obvious and there are cases where the only way to make sure people understand it is with a video tutorial of sorts. Which is annoying both to make and to have to sit and watch through.
This also makes the CLI better at reporting/diagnosing problems… for a GUI app, if you want to report a bug you have to write down a bible of steps on what things you clicked on, etc. (again, a video ultimately is needed to make things clear). Whereas a CLI app has all that information already in the parameters so you can just provide that as the report (along with any input/output data). Or simply copy the contents of your terminal.