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The Macintosh Programmers Workbench (MPW), the first IDE for Mac, had a command-line with a simple shell. When I used it in 1986 it really needed a big machine
by bboreham 8y ago
The Macintosh Programmers Workbench (MPW), the first IDE for Mac, had a command-line with a simple shell.
When I used it in 1986 it really needed a big machine, i.e. 512K RAM :-)
- yourapostasy 8y agoMPW had an interesting way to ease GUI-centric users into its CLI-centric world. There was a mode you could trigger for commands that brought up a help-oriented GUI for the command to build the command argument list, which would then echo onto the command line. Depending upon who built the GUI, it was usually a less terse and friendlier help for new users than AIX's SMIT, for those who are familiar with that. I sometimes wish there was an open source equivalent like that for Linux , but with live, interactive building of the command as the GUI options were manipulated so new users could get a feel for commands more readily. This would act as an intermediate help system for casual users that is friendlier than manpages, and more immediate than searching around the Net. [1] https://www.macintoshrepository.org/1360-macintosh-programmer-s-workshop-mpw-3-0-to-3-5 https://www.macintoshrepository.org/1360-macintosh-programme...
- int_19h 8y ago> There was a mode you could trigger for commands that brought up a help-oriented GUI for the command to build the command argument list, which would then echo onto the command line. This still lives on in a sense. For example, in VSCode, many UI commands translate to executing shell code in its internal terminal (and you can see both the commands and the output).
- chubot 8y agoThanks, I'm pretty sure that's what Stephenson mentioned in his essay / book.