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Story: Has the Command Line Outstayed Its Welcome?

Total Replies: 12

Author	Content
tracyanne Jun 29, 2012 2:08 AM EDT	If the CLI has outstayed it's welcome on Linux,one has to wonder why it's still available on Windows and Mac. Do Apple and Microsoft know something the Linux is not Windows brigade don't?
Ridcully Jun 29, 2012 3:06 AM EDT	I haven't read the article, but given its title, I suspect I know what it is about. Bluntly, I am the most GUI oriented person you can meet. (A very dear Linux friend of mine, with whom I fight daily on the internet, calls me a Luddite for my very conservative concepts - I suspect he may be right, but I'd never tell him that :LOL ).....BUT, if there is one thing I am grateful for, it is the CLI. I call on its power only occasionally, but when I do, I know that what I am about to do via that interface, AND......and this is the real clincher..it is the ONLY way I know to get a particular job done quickly and easily. The CLI is enormously powerful, simple and effective.....I don't often use it, but the fact that it is there makes some tasks much, much easier. I'd be very unhappy to see Linux lose the ability to operate via a terminal. So, has the CLI outstayed its welcome ? Never !!
nikkels Jun 29, 2012 3:39 AM EDT	''''...why it's still available on Windows ...."" Correct me if I am wrong, but did Microsoft not bring out a new version of something like a commandline program or tool, only a good year ago ?. I seem to remember something like that? Anyone.....??
jacog Jun 29, 2012 5:04 AM EDT	nikkels, you are thinking of PowerShell perhaps. A few years old, but recent enough, yes.
nikkels Jun 29, 2012 5:32 AM EDT	Thanks Jacog. That's the one, Windows Powershell. So, commandline and scripting all over. Nea, the bicycle is not dead. Nea, the floppy is not dead Nea, the cddvd is not dead and commandline will never die either.
r_a_trip Jun 29, 2012 6:01 AM EDT	@Jacog You must be referring to Windows PowerShell 2.0. A dot.net, object based CLI replacement for the anemic, DOS-emulating cmd.exe. PowerShell began life as project Monad back in 2003. MS knows that CLI in the right hands is a veritable power house. -0-0-0-0- The piece of LinuxInsider is filler to garner some clicks of the least common denominator GUI users, category PEBCAK, who fear the mere presence of a CLI, even if they will never have to use it. I've never understood this animosity towards the CLI and the people who know how to use it. The CLI is the shortest and least error prone way of letting people fix their problems with Linux by cutting and pasting. The argument that they fear the CLI because they don't know what these commands do is bunk. If they knew what the problem was and how to fix it in the GUI, they wouldn't be asking for help online. If we opted to give them 8 pages of GUI walk-through to fix the problem, they still wouldn't be knowing what they did. It's just that they are more familiar with icons, buttons and checkboxes and mistakenly assume, because they are more familiar with those, that what we instruct them to do to their boxes is less dangerous. Remove the CLI access from Linux to appease the "GUI or die!" crowd and we will simply end up with one fix all instruction to these people. It doesn't work? Simply wipe and reinstall. I can already hear the howls if this were to happen. "Linux isn't any better than Windows. I need to reinstall anyways, so why would I use Linux?!?" These days I'm pretty pragmatic towards mediocre GUI users. You treat your computer like you treat your car? Ok, then you need to treat your sysadmin like you treat your car mechanic. Just do what you are told and don't think you get to understand what your sysadmin told you. You don't know what a car mechanic does to keep your car running and you don't second guess the mechanic. Same rules apply to the sysadmin.
DrDubious Jun 29, 2012 10:34 AM EDT	Hey now, without Linux Insider's laborious and in-depth research, how will I find out what "Slashdot Blogger Hairyfeet" thinks about important issues of the technical world?
BernardSwiss Jun 29, 2012 5:08 PM EDT	* working on the Linux command-line is still far easier than fiddling with the Windows registry * working on the Linux command-line is still far more transparent and comprehensible than fiddling with the Windows registry * The CLI will still be around when the Windows Registry is dead, buried, and mostly forgotten except as a dark and cautionary tale for the old grey-bearded geeks to confound the young 'uns with
BernardSwiss Jun 29, 2012 5:36 PM EDT	Neal Stephenson, describing his experience as an Apple developer in his classic essay "In the Beginning Was the Command Line...", recounted his eye-opening discovery that even while Apple declared the CLI dead and supplanted by the GUI and the mouse, Apple in fact still developed MacOS and applications via commandline tools. Neal Stephenson wrote: http://adam.shand.net/library/in_the_beginning_was_the_comma... During the late 1980's and early 1990's I spent a lot of time programming Macintoshes, and eventually decided for fork over several hundred dollars for an Apple product called the Macintosh Programmer's Workshop, or MPW. MPW had competitors, but it was unquestionably the premier software development system for the Mac. It was what Apple's own engineers used to write Macintosh code. Given that MacOS was far more technologically advanced, at the time, than its competition, and that Linux did not even exist yet, and given that this was the actual program used by Apple's world-class team of creative engineers, I had high expectations. It arrived on a stack of floppy disks about a foot high, and so there was plenty of time for my excitement to build during the endless installation process. The first time I launched MPW, I was probably expecting some kind of touch-feely multimedia showcase. Instead it was austere, almost to the point of being intimidating. It was a scrolling window into which you could type simple, unformatted text. The system would then interpret these lines of text as commands, and try to execute them. It was, in other words, a glass teletype running a command line interface. It came with all sorts of cryptic but powerful commands, which could be invoked by typing their names, and which I learned to use only gradually. It was not until a few years later, when I began messing around with Unix, that I understood that the command line interface embodied in MPW was a re-creation of Unix. In other words, the first thing that Apple's hackers had done when they'd got the MacOS up and running--probably even before they'd gotten it up and running--was to re-create the Unix interface, so that they would be able to get some useful work done. At the time, I simply couldn't get my mind around this, but: as far as Apple's hackers were concerned, the Mac's vaunted Graphical User Interface was an impediment, something to be circumvented before the little toaster even came out onto the market. ( from Chapter 11: Linux http://adam.shand.net/library/in_the_beginning_was_the_comma... )
dinotrac Jun 30, 2012 3:56 PM EDT	Being a disciple of the Linux Insider, I have quit using spoons because forks are much more modern. Life is so much better now. Fewer utensils to wash. Easier to set the table. And...lots of time for deep conversation while I fork away at my soup.
tuxchick Jun 30, 2012 4:03 PM EDT	I love "In the Beginning Was the Command Line..." Wonderful book.
telanoc Jul 03, 2012 1:31 AM EDT	@dino: I'm reminded of a poem I learned as a kid more years ago than I'd admit to: I eat my peas with honey. I've done it all my life. They do taste kind of funny, but it keeps them on the knife.
dinotrac Jul 03, 2012 9:56 AM EDT	@telanoc -- ;0)

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