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From personal experience, many users fear all UIs. This because they fear that their actions will be irreversible more than anything else. And frankly i suspec

From personal experience, many users fear all UIs. This because they fear that their actions will be irreversible more than anything else. And frankly i suspect that CLI gets a bad rep because MacOS never had a CLI to begin with (OSX got one via its unix internals, but i am unsure Apple knew to value it), and DOS was minimalist to put it mildly. Sadly this has lead to unix UI devs to disparage the CLI when they should embrace it. That a X11 GUI tool is a wrapper around CLI tools is not a hindrance but a boon. It means that if the CLI tool behaves correctly, the GUI tool will as well. And if the GUI tool behaves incorrectly, the user can try the same in the CLI to see where the problem originates. It is really sad to see the push towards using dbus rather than CLI to communicate between GUI and daemon, as so much potential information is obscured in the protocol.

DerekL 9y ago
> And frankly i suspect that CLI gets a bad rep because MacOS never had a CLI to begin with (OSX got one via its unix internals, but i am unsure Apple knew to value it), and DOS was minimalist to put it mildly. Macintosh didn't have a (built-in) command line for a long time, but it has supported scripting for a long time, starting with System 7 in 1993.
- mmphosis 9y ago
  And, Macs had a debug button that when placed on the Mac and pressed dropped you into a low level debugger CLI. And prior to AppleScript, there were a few other CLIs on early Macs: Terminal programs like telnet, the CLI in MPW, and CLI / scripting in Applications like HyperCard and others IIRC.
jernfrost 9y ago
That is very different from how I remember history. At least in Norway (and Nordic countries in general I presume), Apple never had much presence. Whatever they thought of the CLI, was rather irrelevant. Amiga and PC which was both popular in the 80s both had a command line. I'd rather say that it was Windows which made the CLI look bad. They made people think that CLI means old fashion technology. Amiga like OS X had a window system and CLI from the beginning and so users did not view CLIs as old fashion technology but rather as one of several alternatives. My experience from the time was that it was mainly PC Windows users who talked down CLIs because they viewed DOS as a antiquated. In some ways it makes sense as the DOS CLI has been horrible for decades and MS never put any effort into making it nice. I'd say OS X could be thanked for resurrecting the CLI. I still encounter Windows developers who almost don't know about the CLI and who never uses it. I don't think you find and OS X developers in the same position.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Mac in Norway is an odd duck. It never caught on as a wide consumer computer, but has maintained a presence as the primary computing platform in media production.
- xvilka 9y ago
  cmd.exe is still horrible and PowerShell looks like more a programming language rather than a true shell. ConEmu makes cmd/PS more usable, but it is still very far even from bash CLI, not to speak abput zsh.

DerekL 9y ago

> And frankly i suspect that CLI gets a bad rep because MacOS never had a CLI to begin with (OSX got one via its unix internals, but i am unsure Apple knew to value it), and DOS was minimalist to put it mildly. Macintosh didn't have a (built-in) command line for a long time, but it has supported scripting for a long time, starting with System 7 in 1993.

mmphosis 9y ago
And, Macs had a debug button that when placed on the Mac and pressed dropped you into a low level debugger CLI. And prior to AppleScript, there were a few other CLIs on early Macs: Terminal programs like telnet, the CLI in MPW, and CLI / scripting in Applications like HyperCard and others IIRC.

jernfrost 9y ago

That is very different from how I remember history. At least in Norway (and Nordic countries in general I presume), Apple never had much presence. Whatever they thought of the CLI, was rather irrelevant. Amiga and PC which was both popular in the 80s both had a command line. I'd rather say that it was Windows which made the CLI look bad. They made people think that CLI means old fashion technology. Amiga like OS X had a window system and CLI from the beginning and so users did not view CLIs as old fashion technology but rather as one of several alternatives. My experience from the time was that it was mainly PC Windows users who talked down CLIs because they viewed DOS as a antiquated. In some ways it makes sense as the DOS CLI has been horrible for decades and MS never put any effort into making it nice. I'd say OS X could be thanked for resurrecting the CLI. I still encounter Windows developers who almost don't know about the CLI and who never uses it. I don't think you find and OS X developers in the same position.

digi_owl 9y ago
Mac in Norway is an odd duck. It never caught on as a wide consumer computer, but has maintained a presence as the primary computing platform in media production.
xvilka 9y ago
cmd.exe is still horrible and PowerShell looks like more a programming language rather than a true shell. ConEmu makes cmd/PS more usable, but it is still very far even from bash CLI, not to speak abput zsh.