5 ms·

> You don't need to memorize lots and lots of command line options. But instead, the keyboard shortcuts for the file manager. > Bookmarking directories (local

by jnxx 6y ago

> You don't need to memorize lots and lots of command line options. But instead, the keyboard shortcuts for the file manager. > Bookmarking directories (local and remote), although there are command line ways to do this. For example zoxide. And depending on the usage pattern, it might turn out more flexible and easier to interconnect with other things. > Say you have a directory of 100 files, and you want to copy about 15 of them elsewhere. What is your typical use case for doing this? I can quickly think of two situations where I needed to do that: One I was copying a selection of photos for my uncle to a folder which I was going to burn on a CD. I am right now not sure whether his laptop still has a CD drive. The other was I was developing some windows library and I needed to make a zip package for other people to test it, because there was still no installer. I think I am not that unusual that generally I try to avoid making copies of the same data to different places; I try to use version control instead.

BeetleB 6y ago
I was going to respond individually, but I realized we're looking at this the wrong way. If you compare bash of today with that of 20 years ago, a lot of extensions/features have been added. On top of that, people use 3rd party tools to enhance their command line experience - you yourself mentioned zoxide. Lots of people make use of fzf. Imagine someone asking what the benefit of fzf is over using the command line - you likely will say that there's a false dichotomy - fzf is a command line tool to enhance your experience. Likewise, midnight commander really is just that. You don't have to choose between the two. When running mc, you have full access to the command line. If you wish, you can just make the panels disappear and invoke them with a keybinding whenever you want to use them. I assume ranger will have similar capability. It's not mc or the command line. It's mc and the command line.
- jnxx 6y ago
  > It's mc and the command line. But does using both not mean one has to memorize more?
  - BeetleB 6y ago
    Of course: In the same way as using fzf or zoxide means memorizing more. In the same way that using a modern shell means memorizing more. At my work there are a lot of people who don't know you can search your bash history with Ctrl-R because they learned the shell before that was a feature (or in most cases, before it was enabled by default). My point is that the separation between mc and the command line is an artificial one. If you don't want to learn, you can always stick to an ancient shell and not learn all the new features. If you are willing to learn, then don't make a distinction between mc and shell features. It's basically: Here are N new useful things to learn, and perhaps I'll want to learn some of them. It's not: Here are N shell features to learn, and M other tools to learn. Of course, you always have to ask yourself if learning it is a good use of your time. I myself have not learned any new shell featuresin a decade - I don't know what the new features are (I have, though, learned new shells). At some point, I realized there are too many things to learn and I need to strategize. I tried learning ranger a year or two ago. I definitely saw its power, but of all the things I wanted to learn, it was low on my list, so I dropped it. OTOH, I did learn dired recently, as I've always been a heavy Emacs user and I had neglected learning it all this time. mc is still better, though, but dired does have some capabilities that mc doesn't have. I started using autojump this year - now you tell me about zoxide. Maybe one day I'll look into it, but not today.

by jnxx 6y ago

BeetleB 6y ago

I was going to respond individually, but I realized we're looking at this the wrong way. If you compare bash of today with that of 20 years ago, a lot of extensions/features have been added. On top of that, people use 3rd party tools to enhance their command line experience - you yourself mentioned zoxide. Lots of people make use of fzf. Imagine someone asking what the benefit of fzf is over using the command line - you likely will say that there's a false dichotomy - fzf is a command line tool to enhance your experience. Likewise, midnight commander really is just that. You don't have to choose between the two. When running mc, you have full access to the command line. If you wish, you can just make the panels disappear and invoke them with a keybinding whenever you want to use them. I assume ranger will have similar capability. It's not mc or the command line. It's mc and the command line.

jnxx 6y ago
> It's mc and the command line. But does using both not mean one has to memorize more?
- BeetleB 6y ago
  Of course: In the same way as using fzf or zoxide means memorizing more. In the same way that using a modern shell means memorizing more. At my work there are a lot of people who don't know you can search your bash history with Ctrl-R because they learned the shell before that was a feature (or in most cases, before it was enabled by default). My point is that the separation between mc and the command line is an artificial one. If you don't want to learn, you can always stick to an ancient shell and not learn all the new features. If you are willing to learn, then don't make a distinction between mc and shell features. It's basically: Here are N new useful things to learn, and perhaps I'll want to learn some of them. It's not: Here are N shell features to learn, and M other tools to learn. Of course, you always have to ask yourself if learning it is a good use of your time. I myself have not learned any new shell featuresin a decade - I don't know what the new features are (I have, though, learned new shells). At some point, I realized there are too many things to learn and I need to strategize. I tried learning ranger a year or two ago. I definitely saw its power, but of all the things I wanted to learn, it was low on my list, so I dropped it. OTOH, I did learn dired recently, as I've always been a heavy Emacs user and I had neglected learning it all this time. mc is still better, though, but dired does have some capabilities that mc doesn't have. I started using autojump this year - now you tell me about zoxide. Maybe one day I'll look into it, but not today.