8 ms·

Maybe because, the cli mode means, you need to remember the commands? In GUI mode, though inefficient, you know exactly where to access help and a few basic pa

by sharmi 8y ago

Maybe because, the cli mode means, you need to remember the commands? In GUI mode, though inefficient, you know exactly where to access help and a few basic params (like dropdown menu on top, usually save under file, cut and copy under edit) that smoothens the learning curve. They have some solid ground from which to start exploring. Whereas under console mode, there is no unifying paradigm. So each tool has a different way of doing the same thing. There is a lot of inertia at the start. Like what command is it for help 'h' or 'h?' or 'help' or 'H' ? What command is it for quit 'q' or 'quit' or 'ctrl+d' or 'ctrl+c' or 'bye' ? For example, in gmail, I expected archive to be 'a' and delete to be 'd' or atleast "DEL". Very basic operations and basic expectations. Turns out, archive is '#' and delete is some char I can't remember now (I think '{' and '}' to indicate whether to go to the previous mail or the next mail. A 'd' to go to next mail and a 'D' to go to previous email would have been a lot more intuitive). Of course, you can customize the key bindings, but then you got to go do it across all your accounts. While people may be quite happy to be able to wield so much power within the slack environment, they are very quickly going to lose their enthusiasm with the introduction of each new console tool, unless what they have learned in the slack environment translates into easier learning curve in the next console env. Basically for users to be able to adopt the console mode, there is should be some sort of standardization.

freefal 8y ago
Just so no one accidentally deletes an email on Gmail, 'e' is archive and '#' is delete.
- vezycash 8y ago
  That's what ctr+z is for isn't it?
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    To stop the current job!? ;oP
    - vezycash 8y ago
      Press delete accidentally or intentionally and you should see a notification about the delete. If you want to undo, then Ctr + Z. At least that's the way computers have worked for eons. Ctr + Z is the reason I prefer computers to typewriters. Software without the ability to undo or reset actions are devolving the user experience to typewriter age.
      - majewsky 8y ago
        > If you want to undo, then Ctr + Z. At least that's the way computers have worked for eons. You're missing the joke. Way before Ctrl-Z started to mean Undo in GUI programs, it was (and still is) assigned to "stop current job" in terminals.
        vezycash 8y ago
        Thanks. Learned something new.
- tomxor 8y ago
  Also ctrl+enter is send email (immediately) which is very annoying after working in google sheets for a while where ctrl+enter is newline...
  - dunham 8y ago
    The most annoying for me is “j” in outlook. It means “move down” in Gmail and dozens of other apps - in outlook it means “mark as junk”.
    - btschaegg 8y ago
      TBH, outlook hotkeys generally are a mess like that - not even when compared with their "competitors", but also when compared with Windows itself. I can't even tell how many times I wanted to search for text in a long email only to find that "Ctrl+F" forwards the open email.
- collinmanderson 8y ago
  Weird. I’ve always done ‘y’ for archive.
Izkata 8y ago
> (I think '{' and '}' to indicate whether to go to the previous mail or the next mail. A 'd' to go to next mail and a 'D' to go to previous email would have been a lot more intuitive) It's "j" for next conversation, "k" for previous - comes from hjkl, vim (and older [0]) keyboard navigation. Then "n" for next and "p" for previous, for emails within the same conversation. Thing is, just like vim, these are supposed to become short-circuited so when in the right context, you don't think of the letters anymore. It's not "that key is j, which is up", it becomes "that key is up". It's the same newbie discovery vs power-user productivity problem described in the post. [0] https://vi.stackexchange.com/questions/9313/why-does-vim-use-hjkl-for-cursor-keys https://vi.stackexchange.com/questions/9313/why-does-vim-use...
- thinkmassive 8y ago
  I think the parent is referring to “delete and go next” and “delete and go previous” rather than simply “go next” and “go prev”
- sharmi 8y ago
  Just as thinkmassive specified, I was talking about the two keys for "delete this email". One key deletes the currently open email and opens the preceeding email, another deletes the current one and moves to the succeeding email.
chriswarbo 8y ago
This is related to DWIM (Do What I Mean) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DWIM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DWIM It seems like DWIM features gained popularity from the 60s to the 80s, but more recent systems avoid it in favour of explicit (although sometimes cryptic) error messages ("weak types", like `==` in PHP and Javascript, are a remaining example of DWIM). This might be connected to the rise of GUIs: more "general user" software became GUI driven, or menu driven, rather than using a free-form input language. That reduced the need for DWIM as a way to help new/casual users. It also meant that the CLI software that remained was generally more powerful, and therefore more dangerous (e.g. bash rather than zork), in which case there's a higher chance for a DWIM system to cause problems.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
marcus_holmes 8y ago
also there's no method of discovering the commands in a CLI. A GUI shows you what you can do, by having all the buttons and widgets displayed. People google for "how to close Vim". I know I did when I started climbing that learning cliff. GUI's usually don't suffer this problem (except Google's UI's, which for some reason are bizarrely complex and hard to navigate).
CamTin 8y ago
"In GUI mode, though inefficient, you know exactly where to access help" I wonder how useful "help" is to the average user. I've personally never been aided in a strange GUI by visiting the help. Usually there is a cryptic search box that returns useless results when I try to look for what I want, or else I'm presented with what is essentially a book to read about the entire philosophy of the interface. *nix manpages/infopages have a similar problem, but Windows help pages seem to be worse for some reason.
- sharmi 8y ago
  Help was the first command that came to my mind. Atleast in my very early days, (this was in early 2000s) I did use lots of help. Maybe help was better then or I was so clueless that even the insipid quagmire of the help pages still proved to be useful. But in general, I am talking about certain consistency among ui. Say you have opened a new program and you do not know where to start. We can go to 'File' and there is sure to be a "New Document"/"New Object"/"New Diagram"/"New <whatever-model-the-program-work-with>" available to start. Similarly Edit, Insert, Preferences, Script, Debug and their visual and keyboard access methods are all paradigms that are consistent across GUI. At the worst case, you can do a systematic exploration of the ui to find all possible actions one can perform. This has to be standardized to CLI also for a shot at widespread adaptation.
  - CamTin 8y ago
    Yeah, I guess we're talking less about "help" (F1 in Windows, or at least it used to be) than about the user-interface guidelines that mandate the "File" dialog and so. As for doing a "systemic exploration", this is largely the role that manpages or "-h" fills in traditional Unix programs, but you're right that we need a better solution for widespread adoption of a "modern" Slack-y CLI for nontechnical users. Maybe show HELM-style autocomplete "menu" of possible subcommands in the input area or sidebar?
ests_eu 8y ago
> Like what command is it for help 'h' or 'h?' or 'help' or 'H'? It's all about smart desing of commands. In your example all of those options could work, plus options like 'he', 'hel', 'help', 'help!!!', 'Help???', and even 'HALP' or 'WTF?'. Combine this with smart autocomplete, and good hints (i.e. I don't understand 'hlp'. Did you mean 'help') and you can mitigate the drawbacks of CLI commands greatly. As for Gmail, you are talking here about keyboard shortcuts, NOT commands, and that's something I completely different IMO.

by sharmi 8y ago

freefal 8y ago

Just so no one accidentally deletes an email on Gmail, 'e' is archive and '#' is delete.

vezycash 8y ago
That's what ctr+z is for isn't it?
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  To stop the current job!? ;oP
  - vezycash 8y ago
    Press delete accidentally or intentionally and you should see a notification about the delete. If you want to undo, then Ctr + Z. At least that's the way computers have worked for eons. Ctr + Z is the reason I prefer computers to typewriters. Software without the ability to undo or reset actions are devolving the user experience to typewriter age.
    - majewsky 8y ago
      > If you want to undo, then Ctr + Z. At least that's the way computers have worked for eons. You're missing the joke. Way before Ctrl-Z started to mean Undo in GUI programs, it was (and still is) assigned to "stop current job" in terminals.
      - vezycash 8y ago
        Thanks. Learned something new.
tomxor 8y ago
Also ctrl+enter is send email (immediately) which is very annoying after working in google sheets for a while where ctrl+enter is newline...
- dunham 8y ago
  The most annoying for me is “j” in outlook. It means “move down” in Gmail and dozens of other apps - in outlook it means “mark as junk”.
  - btschaegg 8y ago
    TBH, outlook hotkeys generally are a mess like that - not even when compared with their "competitors", but also when compared with Windows itself. I can't even tell how many times I wanted to search for text in a long email only to find that "Ctrl+F" forwards the open email.
collinmanderson 8y ago
Weird. I’ve always done ‘y’ for archive.

Izkata 8y ago

> (I think '{' and '}' to indicate whether to go to the previous mail or the next mail. A 'd' to go to next mail and a 'D' to go to previous email would have been a lot more intuitive) It's "j" for next conversation, "k" for previous - comes from hjkl, vim (and older [0]) keyboard navigation. Then "n" for next and "p" for previous, for emails within the same conversation. Thing is, just like vim, these are supposed to become short-circuited so when in the right context, you don't think of the letters anymore. It's not "that key is j, which is up", it becomes "that key is up". It's the same newbie discovery vs power-user productivity problem described in the post. [0] https://vi.stackexchange.com/questions/9313/why-does-vim-use-hjkl-for-cursor-keys https://vi.stackexchange.com/questions/9313/why-does-vim-use...

thinkmassive 8y ago
I think the parent is referring to “delete and go next” and “delete and go previous” rather than simply “go next” and “go prev”
sharmi 8y ago
Just as thinkmassive specified, I was talking about the two keys for "delete this email". One key deletes the currently open email and opens the preceeding email, another deletes the current one and moves to the succeeding email.

chriswarbo 8y ago

This is related to DWIM (Do What I Mean) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DWIM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DWIM It seems like DWIM features gained popularity from the 60s to the 80s, but more recent systems avoid it in favour of explicit (although sometimes cryptic) error messages ("weak types", like `==` in PHP and Javascript, are a remaining example of DWIM). This might be connected to the rise of GUIs: more "general user" software became GUI driven, or menu driven, rather than using a free-form input language. That reduced the need for DWIM as a way to help new/casual users. It also meant that the CLI software that remained was generally more powerful, and therefore more dangerous (e.g. bash rather than zork), in which case there's a higher chance for a DWIM system to cause problems.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

marcus_holmes 8y ago

also there's no method of discovering the commands in a CLI. A GUI shows you what you can do, by having all the buttons and widgets displayed. People google for "how to close Vim". I know I did when I started climbing that learning cliff. GUI's usually don't suffer this problem (except Google's UI's, which for some reason are bizarrely complex and hard to navigate).

CamTin 8y ago

"In GUI mode, though inefficient, you know exactly where to access help" I wonder how useful "help" is to the average user. I've personally never been aided in a strange GUI by visiting the help. Usually there is a cryptic search box that returns useless results when I try to look for what I want, or else I'm presented with what is essentially a book to read about the entire philosophy of the interface. *nix manpages/infopages have a similar problem, but Windows help pages seem to be worse for some reason.

sharmi 8y ago
Help was the first command that came to my mind. Atleast in my very early days, (this was in early 2000s) I did use lots of help. Maybe help was better then or I was so clueless that even the insipid quagmire of the help pages still proved to be useful. But in general, I am talking about certain consistency among ui. Say you have opened a new program and you do not know where to start. We can go to 'File' and there is sure to be a "New Document"/"New Object"/"New Diagram"/"New <whatever-model-the-program-work-with>" available to start. Similarly Edit, Insert, Preferences, Script, Debug and their visual and keyboard access methods are all paradigms that are consistent across GUI. At the worst case, you can do a systematic exploration of the ui to find all possible actions one can perform. This has to be standardized to CLI also for a shot at widespread adaptation.
- CamTin 8y ago
  Yeah, I guess we're talking less about "help" (F1 in Windows, or at least it used to be) than about the user-interface guidelines that mandate the "File" dialog and so. As for doing a "systemic exploration", this is largely the role that manpages or "-h" fills in traditional Unix programs, but you're right that we need a better solution for widespread adoption of a "modern" Slack-y CLI for nontechnical users. Maybe show HELM-style autocomplete "menu" of possible subcommands in the input area or sidebar?

ests_eu 8y ago

> Like what command is it for help 'h' or 'h?' or 'help' or 'H'? It's all about smart desing of commands. In your example all of those options could work, plus options like 'he', 'hel', 'help', 'help!!!', 'Help???', and even 'HALP' or 'WTF?'. Combine this with smart autocomplete, and good hints (i.e. I don't understand 'hlp'. Did you mean 'help') and you can mitigate the drawbacks of CLI commands greatly. As for Gmail, you are talking here about keyboard shortcuts, NOT commands, and that's something I completely different IMO.