I'm a little confused about what the author is really trying to say. In this article, it sounds to me like he is saying that all of this interaction with the c

I'm a little confused about what the author is really trying to say. In this article, it sounds to me like he is saying that all of this interaction with the command line is arcane, stupid and just needs to go away. But then I read the other article he wrote which he referenced in this article ("The Two Cultures of Computing" -- http://pgbovine.net/two-cultures-of-computing.htm http://pgbovine.net/two-cultures-of-computing.htm). In that article he discusses how there are two groups of people -- the "User" group that just wants to do everything with a GUI interface, and the "Programmer" group that likes the intricacies of the command line. There he discusses the difficulty he had with explaining to students the justification for learning the command line tools (which included the fact that they provided more flexibility than the GUI tools alone could achieve). He concludes the "Two Cultures" article by encouraging folks in the "Programmer" group to bridge the gap between the two cultures: "You need to gently introduce students to why these tools will eventually make them more productive in the long run, even though there is a steep learning curve at the outset" Although I dislike the notion that the command line is "bad" or "arcane" just because it has been around for a long time (which the "Two Cultures" article seemed to harp on a lot), I do agree that bridging the cultures is an excellent idea. And then I go back to the article referenced in this post, which seems to be saying that all this interaction with the command line is just boring, stupid, and has no value. So again, I'm not sure what the author is ultimately trying to say. Personally, I appreciate both. I love a good GUI that makes common tasks fast as lightning to rip through. But I will always prefer to also have the ability to get down to a lower level, where I can make the tools do even greater things that the author of the GUI did not think of or did not have the time or motiviation to implement. Also, I think it is a bad idea to discourage students (especially Computer Science students) from learning the nuts and bolts of how computers work. We have enough of a shortage of people with that kind of knowledge already. IMHO we need as many people with those kinds of skills as we can get.