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I really wish there were more GUI wrappers that literally wrote the CLI commands out on screen as the GUI was modified, to help with bridging the GUI/CLI gap fo

I really wish there were more GUI wrappers that literally wrote the CLI commands out on screen as the GUI was modified, to help with bridging the GUI/CLI gap for people. Also, I miss arRsync.

F-0X 7y ago
The problem with this is that it misses the point of most cli programs, which is that they are to be composed with other programs. Besides, when colleagues of mine decided to demystify the command line and learn it proper, they're always surprised how much easier it is than they expected. The GUI/CLI gap, as far as I have seen, is one of willingness to invest some time to learn.
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  > The problem with this is that it misses the point of most cli programs, which is that they are to be composed with other programs. That's not true, CLI programs would still exist even if they could not be composed. And I would guess that if you counted how many of our commands include 1, 2, or 3 executables, the 1 column would be the biggest by far. One of the major headaches of CLI programs is that they're hard to learn interactively because there's no starting point. You have to read the docs. The point of a GUI command builder is that it gives you something interactive to play with to start to learn how the CLI commands work. The point is not to do everything through the builder, the point is to bootstrap people to the point where they no longer need it. Also, there's no reason a GUI command builder couldn't also show you how to do composition.
rmah 7y ago
Apple did this with MPW back in the day. I think the feature was called "commando". You would type the command name, then "..." and up pops a dialog box with all the options and popup help for what different things meant. As you fiddled with the GUI, it would generate the flags as text you could see. And finally, you could execute, or paste the command line text into the console, or both. It was awesome.
mrpippy 7y ago
Apple's MPW (Macintosh Programmers Workshop) had exactly this: a tool called Commando which allowed you to graphically put together and run command lines. http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/tools/mpw-tools/commandref/commando.html http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/too...
pdkl95 7y ago
A good example of a GUI that prepares commands is pgadmin3. Many of it's dialogs accumulate pending changes into a viewable and editable SQL buffer: https://imgur.com/oagJTVA https://imgur.com/oagJTVA You don't have to use that feature; the "SQL" tab can be ignored, but it's almost available as the last tab of any dialog..
orbifold 7y ago
For what its worth this is what a lot of CAD and EDA tools are doing (Autocad, Vivado (Xilinx), Cadence etc.)

I really wish there were more GUI wrappers that literally wrote the CLI commands out on screen as the GUI was modified, to help with bridging the GUI/CLI gap for people. Also, I miss arRsync.

F-0X 7y ago

The problem with this is that it misses the point of most cli programs, which is that they are to be composed with other programs. Besides, when colleagues of mine decided to demystify the command line and learn it proper, they're always surprised how much easier it is than they expected. The GUI/CLI gap, as far as I have seen, is one of willingness to invest some time to learn.

erikpukinskis 7y ago
> The problem with this is that it misses the point of most cli programs, which is that they are to be composed with other programs. That's not true, CLI programs would still exist even if they could not be composed. And I would guess that if you counted how many of our commands include 1, 2, or 3 executables, the 1 column would be the biggest by far. One of the major headaches of CLI programs is that they're hard to learn interactively because there's no starting point. You have to read the docs. The point of a GUI command builder is that it gives you something interactive to play with to start to learn how the CLI commands work. The point is not to do everything through the builder, the point is to bootstrap people to the point where they no longer need it. Also, there's no reason a GUI command builder couldn't also show you how to do composition.

rmah 7y ago

Apple did this with MPW back in the day. I think the feature was called "commando". You would type the command name, then "..." and up pops a dialog box with all the options and popup help for what different things meant. As you fiddled with the GUI, it would generate the flags as text you could see. And finally, you could execute, or paste the command line text into the console, or both. It was awesome.

mrpippy 7y ago

Apple's MPW (Macintosh Programmers Workshop) had exactly this: a tool called Commando which allowed you to graphically put together and run command lines. http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/tools/mpw-tools/commandref/commando.html http://mirror.informatimago.com/next/developer.apple.com/too...

pdkl95 7y ago

A good example of a GUI that prepares commands is pgadmin3. Many of it's dialogs accumulate pending changes into a viewable and editable SQL buffer: https://imgur.com/oagJTVA https://imgur.com/oagJTVA You don't have to use that feature; the "SQL" tab can be ignored, but it's almost available as the last tab of any dialog..

orbifold 7y ago

For what its worth this is what a lot of CAD and EDA tools are doing (Autocad, Vivado (Xilinx), Cadence etc.)