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The world moved from CLIs to GUIs. Guis have not only persisted, they've improved. If someone insists on using a CLI and nothing else, after all these years of

The world moved from CLIs to GUIs. Guis have not only persisted, they've improved. If someone insists on using a CLI and nothing else, after all these years of the world having moved to GUIs, I wonder what prejudice is behind it. How, reasonably, can all these tools beat a thing like Visual Studio? Must limit job opportinities too...?

collyw 8y ago
Some tasks are better suited to the command line. Others are better in the terminal. Package installation lies right in the middle for me. If I know exactly what I want sudo apt-get install is the quickest and easiest. If I am not sure exactly what I want its easier to browse around using synaptic. I can do more complex greps on the command line than most GUI tools will allow me to use.
- godshatter 8y ago
  I tend to use apt-cache search a lot if I know generally what I want but don't know the exact package name. It lets you use regular expressions when searching and you can restrict it to just the package names by giving it the --names-only switch. If I'm actually wanting to install a game of some type, but don't know what I want to try out, then I'll load up synaptic.
chosenbreed37 8y ago
> The world moved from CLIs to GUIs. Guis have not only persisted, they've improved. If someone insists on using a CLI and nothing else, after all these years of the world having moved to GUIs, I wonder what prejudice is behind it. The world is a big place and there are a variety of programs being written in a number of languages. Not all of them need a GUI. Oh and they don't have to beat Visual Studio. They just need to be the right tool for the job.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
> Guis have not only persisted, they've improved. Respectfully disagree. They've bloated up over time, and lost information density due to trends emphasizing lots of whitespace and hiding options. I liked my GUIs from 10 years ago better, thank you. > If someone insists on using a CLI and nothing else, after all these years of the world having moved to GUIs, I wonder what prejudice is behind it. It's not prejudice, it's pragmatism. CLI and vim/Emacs tend to have much higher productivity ceilings (i.e. there is something to master, and that mastery brings rewards). They compose better too, so you can solve more problems without starting to desperately bend the problem into the shape of your tool. They're also lighter, faster, enable easy automation (which is the whole point of this job), and can be used remotely. > How, reasonably, can all these tools beat a thing like Visual Studio? Because IDEs can be seen as one particular arrangement of those tools. It tends to cover the most common use cases, but you cannot really step outside it. Whereas "all these tools" used directly can be arranged in different ways, solving more problems. > Must limit job opportinities too...? No, it doesn't. With IDEs there's little to no expectation of "proficiency" there - after all, the GUI is there so that you don't have to know your tool.
FerretFred 8y ago
> If someone insists on using a CLI and nothing else, after all these years of the world having moved to GUIs, I wonder what prejudice is behind it. No prejudice.. I run a dev/comms box on a Raspberry Pi Zero W that has 512Mb of RAM. I originally set it up with a lightweight GUI which would actually start up but was pointless to try and use for anything. Reverting back to CLI meant that I could now "do stuff", and I rarely use more than 70Mb memory even with tmux running.
- wvenable 8y ago
  That's nothing, I do BASIC on a Commodore 64. 70mb of RAM -- pssah! The average developer workstation probably has 32GB of RAM, a fast SSD, and huge monitors but 64k is all you really need.
  - mypalmike 8y ago
    Bah, my 1KB Timex Sinclair 1000 has labels on its "keyboard" with every BASIC keyword. I don't even have to type the whole word. Productivity!

collyw 8y ago

Some tasks are better suited to the command line. Others are better in the terminal. Package installation lies right in the middle for me. If I know exactly what I want sudo apt-get install is the quickest and easiest. If I am not sure exactly what I want its easier to browse around using synaptic. I can do more complex greps on the command line than most GUI tools will allow me to use.

godshatter 8y ago
I tend to use apt-cache search a lot if I know generally what I want but don't know the exact package name. It lets you use regular expressions when searching and you can restrict it to just the package names by giving it the --names-only switch. If I'm actually wanting to install a game of some type, but don't know what I want to try out, then I'll load up synaptic.

chosenbreed37 8y ago

> The world moved from CLIs to GUIs. Guis have not only persisted, they've improved. If someone insists on using a CLI and nothing else, after all these years of the world having moved to GUIs, I wonder what prejudice is behind it. The world is a big place and there are a variety of programs being written in a number of languages. Not all of them need a GUI. Oh and they don't have to beat Visual Studio. They just need to be the right tool for the job.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

> Guis have not only persisted, they've improved. Respectfully disagree. They've bloated up over time, and lost information density due to trends emphasizing lots of whitespace and hiding options. I liked my GUIs from 10 years ago better, thank you. > If someone insists on using a CLI and nothing else, after all these years of the world having moved to GUIs, I wonder what prejudice is behind it. It's not prejudice, it's pragmatism. CLI and vim/Emacs tend to have much higher productivity ceilings (i.e. there is something to master, and that mastery brings rewards). They compose better too, so you can solve more problems without starting to desperately bend the problem into the shape of your tool. They're also lighter, faster, enable easy automation (which is the whole point of this job), and can be used remotely. > How, reasonably, can all these tools beat a thing like Visual Studio? Because IDEs can be seen as one particular arrangement of those tools. It tends to cover the most common use cases, but you cannot really step outside it. Whereas "all these tools" used directly can be arranged in different ways, solving more problems. > Must limit job opportinities too...? No, it doesn't. With IDEs there's little to no expectation of "proficiency" there - after all, the GUI is there so that you don't have to know your tool.

FerretFred 8y ago

> If someone insists on using a CLI and nothing else, after all these years of the world having moved to GUIs, I wonder what prejudice is behind it. No prejudice.. I run a dev/comms box on a Raspberry Pi Zero W that has 512Mb of RAM. I originally set it up with a lightweight GUI which would actually start up but was pointless to try and use for anything. Reverting back to CLI meant that I could now "do stuff", and I rarely use more than 70Mb memory even with tmux running.

wvenable 8y ago
That's nothing, I do BASIC on a Commodore 64. 70mb of RAM -- pssah! The average developer workstation probably has 32GB of RAM, a fast SSD, and huge monitors but 64k is all you really need.
- mypalmike 8y ago
  Bah, my 1KB Timex Sinclair 1000 has labels on its "keyboard" with every BASIC keyword. I don't even have to type the whole word. Productivity!