Are GUI Dev Tools More Advanced than CLI Counterparts?

JohnG inputs: "I just got into quite a long argument over on the Yahoo! message boards over the power of command line dev tools. Basically the guy told me that it is impossible to create 'state of the art' programs with command-line tools. But when I asked him to give me reasons why he just called me stupid and 'behind the times'. Considering he was an avid supporter of anything Microsoft, I take what he says with a grain of salt. But what I want to know is how many of you developers have switched from command line work to KDevelop or CodeWarrior? And what advantages you think it offers? Certainly there are many 'state of the art' apps created with command line tools, but I'm open to anything that can increase productivity. I've just never seen a compelling reason to make the switch from what I am used to and comfortable with." Personally, I feel the best development environment to work in would be one that ignores neither the GUI, or the command line.

Comments

Can we mod the original post down?

[Bistronaut]

-1 Flaimbait, I say.

Ask Slashdot: Who Cares?

[bk1e]

Great. I filter out "Ask Slashdot" so I don't have to put up with deliberate flamebait and lazy students asking for help with their homework, and what do I get? Slashdot starts posting stupid reader-response polls in "Developers". Time to filter that out too.

real shells?

[anshil]

A lot of people who grew up and are used to windows prefere the mouse and clicks over keyboard and strokes. They tend to say that with the mouse they can do faster then with their shell.

Sure it's because the command line interface windows ships with is the DOS-Box, actually a very bad and lausy shell. Sure you're faster with explorers cut&paste than typing things into the DOS box.

But most of these people never touched a bash shell. Those who learned to use a 'real' shell (bash) will most likely always prefer to use it against point+click tools, since the shell allows you to write powerfull commands very fast, through technics like tab completion. And for the advandaced user he can even enter commands to be executed in loops.

Try to write apply the program X against all n files ending with .x, In the Dos box? Impossible but entering n times the command, in windows explorer? possible but nasty, since it requires you to select all .x files seperatly, in a bash shell? No problem just write
for i in *.d; X $I; done

finished! It might take once here and there an hour to study the advantaged features a real shell might offer, but for people having to work 8 hours each they with a computer they pay easily of in the long run.

It's like a cashier, in his profession an expert. No cashier wants to use a point&click interface, it would take them indefintly to enter a more compilicated invoice. owever a secreaty having to write just one invoice each day, she will not want to spend a weak to learn the real cashiers interface with all it's short cuts, she will like to click on a menu, look what it offers, drag down to a submenu, look again what it offers, select a item, and fill out a popup box. This takes her say 1 minute. Fine since she has to do it only say once a day. However a cashier working on a line having to enter 1000 entries each day this is unacceptable, however he knows his interface designed for the professional very well, he hits in example CTLR+R, A, 15, Enter and is finished, took him 5 seconds.

Same is it for programmers, shell's. makefiles etc. all take their time to learn, and a hobby programmer will prefer a point&click interface. While one working heavily with these tools day, day out, will prefer a makefile far over the project settings dialog, since it allows him to write more powerful commands in shorter times, but in contrast to the dialog it requires knowledge/training to understand the makefile language.