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Well good for you! I am impressed seriously! It is 2015 and arguments like "we don't need no stinking mice" are still used to defend vi. If all that effort was

by dstanko 11y ago

Well good for you! I am impressed seriously! It is 2015 and arguments like "we don't need no stinking mice" are still used to defend vi. If all that effort was put into building a better shell that works with a mouse (or trackpad if you use them apples), where would we be right now?

wz1000 11y ago
> If all that effort was put into building a better shell that works with a mouse (or trackpad if you use them apples), where would we be right now? You are missing the very point of a shell. Text gives you power, composability and flexibility that you simply cannot achieve with a GUI. Automation becomes extremely easy because of this. Editing text without having to move your hands back and forth between keyboard and mouse makes it so much faster and lets you concentrate on your actual work instead of breaking your concentration. Vim has its own vocabulary, and the essence of vim commands is composability. You imbibe this vocabulary over time and editing text becomes effortless like stringing together words to form sentences and sentences to form paragraphs. The shell is so successful precisely because it uses text as a common representation for all data. It simply wouldn't work with a mouse. Many people have tried this and failed. Computers are good at manipulating text and humans are good at understanding text. The abstract geometry that you have to use to describe mouse movements is neither intuitive, nor is it easy to process.
- WorldWideWayne 11y ago
  > Text gives you power, composability and flexibility that you simply cannot achieve with a GUI. Can you think of any big things that you lose though? > Editing text without having to move your hands back and forth between keyboard and mouse makes it so much faster and lets you concentrate on your actual work... I could probably get between floors in my house an order of magnitude faster if I replaced the stair cases with slides and a trampolines. Somehow, that does not seem practical though. > The shell is so successful precisely because it uses text as a common representation for all data. Successful in what way? As successful as GUIs? > Computers are good at manipulating text and humans are good at understanding text. Humans are good at understanding patterns and symbols and they're not good at memorizing text commands. That's why everybody can use GUIs but few can use a shell.
  - pfranz 11y ago
    Ahh, these arguments. They each have pros and cons. GUIs are generally more discoverable. Terminals are /way/ more flexible, faster, and customizable if that's your job and you take the time to learn them. > Can you think of any big things that you lose though? Definitely. Customizing behaviors. I work with image sequences a lot. "ls" is used to list files in a directory "lss" is a command we wrote to group image sequences together. This makes finding missing images in a sequence, knowing the range, and dealing with 1000's of files in a folder trivial. These are technically possible with a gui, you need to re-write your whole file-browser or have one with some plugin system that support this (I don't know of any). > I could probably get between floors in my house an order of magnitude faster if I replaced the stair cases with slides and a trampolines. Somehow, that does not seem practical though. That's a terrible analogy and a half-truth on both sides. Jumping to the mouse does slow things down, but I use GUI file browsers without a mouse just fine. The only thing I can't do out of the box is resize and move windows around--navigating through directories is fine. > Humans are good at understanding patterns and symbols and they're not good at memorizing text commands. That's why everybody can use GUIs but few can use a shell. I think the difference is that guis offer more spacial queues and persistent information than terminals do. Someone who has never used a computer would be equally confused at how a mouse or scrolling worked. Humans are not terrible as memorizing text commands, there's just no need to use them everyday and a gui is usually good enough. Fewer people can drive a stick-shift or parallel park now that it's generally unnecessary. It's not that it was difficult. I imagine in a few generations after automation takes off driving a car at all will be difficult for most people.
    - WorldWideWayne 11y ago
      Ahh, these responses... (This space reserved for further passive aggressive comments.) You didn't say how you arrived at the conclusion that shells are "so successful". How are you measuring that? > ...a command we wrote to group image sequences together. This makes finding missing images in a sequence, knowing the range, and dealing with 1000's of files in a folder trivial. These are technically possible with a gui... Those things are eminently possible with a GUI without writing your own file browser since most major file browsers offer a range of extensibility options. Also, GUI automation is a thing and it works well. Just last month I wrote a simple script to automate image extraction from a program that didn't provide any API for it. As a matter of fact, I didn't even have to write most of the script because the computer aided me by recording my mouse clicks. > Jumping to the mouse does slow things down. Looking up commands and configuration protocols slows things down way more though. > Someone who has never used a computer would be equally confused at how a mouse or scrolling worked. Equally as confused as they'd be when presented with nothing more than a blinking cursor? I don't think so... Once you move the mouse and see the pointer move, it's pretty obvious how movement works. Sixty seconds is enough time to accurately convey complete operating instructions for a mouse. Teaching someone how to use a shell would take much more time I imagine. Anyway, I use a shell when it suits me and a GUI when that suits me, but most importantly, I am not a bigot or an elitist about it. I don't think that there is one true way to do things.
noir_lord 11y ago
> where would we be right now? Plan 9's ACME or it's descendant probably.
dstanko 11y ago
thanks everyone for clearing this for me... I guess you learn something every day, even after 30 years of programming. I would have never thought of the infamous "computers are good at processing text" argument. Is there an archive of pro-vi arguments somewhere?
- wz1000 11y ago
  You achieve absolutely nothing with your casual dismissal and sarcasm. The fact that you have not made a single counterargument to any of my points betrays a lot.
  - dstanko 11y ago
    There you go - you win this argument! Now you can feel fulfillment when you log into your graphical OS and instantly open gazillion terminal windows to bypass all the progress that has been made in last 20+ years... because computers are better processing text then graphics. I grant you one thing: when you sit in your cafe pretending to work on something infinitely more important then everyone else, girls/boys will be impressed by the complexity of your screen...

by dstanko 11y ago

wz1000 11y ago

> If all that effort was put into building a better shell that works with a mouse (or trackpad if you use them apples), where would we be right now? You are missing the very point of a shell. Text gives you power, composability and flexibility that you simply cannot achieve with a GUI. Automation becomes extremely easy because of this. Editing text without having to move your hands back and forth between keyboard and mouse makes it so much faster and lets you concentrate on your actual work instead of breaking your concentration. Vim has its own vocabulary, and the essence of vim commands is composability. You imbibe this vocabulary over time and editing text becomes effortless like stringing together words to form sentences and sentences to form paragraphs. The shell is so successful precisely because it uses text as a common representation for all data. It simply wouldn't work with a mouse. Many people have tried this and failed. Computers are good at manipulating text and humans are good at understanding text. The abstract geometry that you have to use to describe mouse movements is neither intuitive, nor is it easy to process.

WorldWideWayne 11y ago
> Text gives you power, composability and flexibility that you simply cannot achieve with a GUI. Can you think of any big things that you lose though? > Editing text without having to move your hands back and forth between keyboard and mouse makes it so much faster and lets you concentrate on your actual work... I could probably get between floors in my house an order of magnitude faster if I replaced the stair cases with slides and a trampolines. Somehow, that does not seem practical though. > The shell is so successful precisely because it uses text as a common representation for all data. Successful in what way? As successful as GUIs? > Computers are good at manipulating text and humans are good at understanding text. Humans are good at understanding patterns and symbols and they're not good at memorizing text commands. That's why everybody can use GUIs but few can use a shell.
- pfranz 11y ago
  Ahh, these arguments. They each have pros and cons. GUIs are generally more discoverable. Terminals are /way/ more flexible, faster, and customizable if that's your job and you take the time to learn them. > Can you think of any big things that you lose though? Definitely. Customizing behaviors. I work with image sequences a lot. "ls" is used to list files in a directory "lss" is a command we wrote to group image sequences together. This makes finding missing images in a sequence, knowing the range, and dealing with 1000's of files in a folder trivial. These are technically possible with a gui, you need to re-write your whole file-browser or have one with some plugin system that support this (I don't know of any). > I could probably get between floors in my house an order of magnitude faster if I replaced the stair cases with slides and a trampolines. Somehow, that does not seem practical though. That's a terrible analogy and a half-truth on both sides. Jumping to the mouse does slow things down, but I use GUI file browsers without a mouse just fine. The only thing I can't do out of the box is resize and move windows around--navigating through directories is fine. > Humans are good at understanding patterns and symbols and they're not good at memorizing text commands. That's why everybody can use GUIs but few can use a shell. I think the difference is that guis offer more spacial queues and persistent information than terminals do. Someone who has never used a computer would be equally confused at how a mouse or scrolling worked. Humans are not terrible as memorizing text commands, there's just no need to use them everyday and a gui is usually good enough. Fewer people can drive a stick-shift or parallel park now that it's generally unnecessary. It's not that it was difficult. I imagine in a few generations after automation takes off driving a car at all will be difficult for most people.
  - WorldWideWayne 11y ago
    Ahh, these responses... (This space reserved for further passive aggressive comments.) You didn't say how you arrived at the conclusion that shells are "so successful". How are you measuring that? > ...a command we wrote to group image sequences together. This makes finding missing images in a sequence, knowing the range, and dealing with 1000's of files in a folder trivial. These are technically possible with a gui... Those things are eminently possible with a GUI without writing your own file browser since most major file browsers offer a range of extensibility options. Also, GUI automation is a thing and it works well. Just last month I wrote a simple script to automate image extraction from a program that didn't provide any API for it. As a matter of fact, I didn't even have to write most of the script because the computer aided me by recording my mouse clicks. > Jumping to the mouse does slow things down. Looking up commands and configuration protocols slows things down way more though. > Someone who has never used a computer would be equally confused at how a mouse or scrolling worked. Equally as confused as they'd be when presented with nothing more than a blinking cursor? I don't think so... Once you move the mouse and see the pointer move, it's pretty obvious how movement works. Sixty seconds is enough time to accurately convey complete operating instructions for a mouse. Teaching someone how to use a shell would take much more time I imagine. Anyway, I use a shell when it suits me and a GUI when that suits me, but most importantly, I am not a bigot or an elitist about it. I don't think that there is one true way to do things.

noir_lord 11y ago

> where would we be right now? Plan 9's ACME or it's descendant probably.

dstanko 11y ago

thanks everyone for clearing this for me... I guess you learn something every day, even after 30 years of programming. I would have never thought of the infamous "computers are good at processing text" argument. Is there an archive of pro-vi arguments somewhere?

wz1000 11y ago
You achieve absolutely nothing with your casual dismissal and sarcasm. The fact that you have not made a single counterargument to any of my points betrays a lot.
- dstanko 11y ago
  There you go - you win this argument! Now you can feel fulfillment when you log into your graphical OS and instantly open gazillion terminal windows to bypass all the progress that has been made in last 20+ years... because computers are better processing text then graphics. I grant you one thing: when you sit in your cafe pretending to work on something infinitely more important then everyone else, girls/boys will be impressed by the complexity of your screen...