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> Theres no reason why 'youtube-dl url' shouldn't just do the 'right thing'. The error in your reasoning is that you assume the existence of a singular right t
by majewsky 7y ago
> Theres no reason why 'youtube-dl url' shouldn't just do the 'right thing'.
The error in your reasoning is that you assume the existence of a singular right thing. Software that attempts to just do the right thing tends to suffer from what I call Overly Clever Syndrome. I hate waiters or store clerks that second-guess my motivations. Why should I like software that does the same?
That said, `youtube-dl $url` will download the pointed-to video in the best available quality, so that's a pretty decent default.
- benj111 7y agoI put 'right thing' in inverted commas because I know how slippery it can be. Gui apps have defaults too, this isn't a problem unique to terminal apps. I'll go further and say GUI apps suffer more because they tend to design around a default and have many fewer non default options, in the name of being easy to use. Terminal apps on the other hand 'suffer' because they don't make enough assumptions about how it is to be used. Suffer is very much in inverted commas though, sometimes you want to do that niche thing, and having something that makes no assumptions about how it will be used is great. On the other hand having to read a manpage for the simplest of things is not so great.