Slashdot Mirror
The Command Line - Best Newbie Interface?
An anonymous reader writes "This essay describes the surprising results of a brief trial with a group of new computer users about the relative ease of the command line interface versus the GUIs now omnipresent in computer interfaces. It comes from practical experience I have of teaching computing to complete beginners or newbies as computer power-users often term them."
since you are obviously a lunix user - did you have gay sex with them before or after this lesson? And did it involve a mare?
OS X sucks.
The Unix/*nix/*nux CLI is not easy. It is a major design flaw that the file name "jones.txt" is treated different than "joNes.txt".
If you want the best of both worlds, try the Amiga CLI, which has many features of *nix, but does not take case-sensitivity to this useless extreme.
Good point on OS X, however. It is Apple's first serious OS. The previous ones were hard to use and crippled due to the lack of a CLI.
Bullshit it does.
The GUI portion of the OS is fragile and reacts unpredicabily to changes to the underlining structure of the OS.
Seemingly innociate changes or functions (like mounting a smb share from command line) WILL on occasion lock up the system and render great swaths of the OS unusuable and/or locked up. Sometimes not even a reboot can fix it completely.
None of this inteaction is documented ANYWERE. Their is no telling what you do and how the OS reacts, the config files aren't documented, how the home files and profiles react to changes is undocumented. Even the man files for commands are mostly just copies from BSD and may not be completely accurate to the changes that Apple had to make to those commands.
OS X is fun to use, but it's like a toy OS from the perspective of a experianced *nix geek.
I know this sounds trollish, but I'm all for making people learn how to do things themselves.
If you aren't willing to learn how to use a command prompt (in Windows, Mac or Linux) you probably aren't willing to learn how to use the normal features.
At best, these users turn into the ones that call me everytime their email "goes down" because AOL booted them.
Just take a hardline approach to computers - if you can't be bothered to learn, I can't be bothered to help you.
Why should we be handholding these lusers? Sure I have the BOFH mentality, but is it so wrong to think that perhaps these people should open a book before they try to operate some technical equipment? People who operate cars, airplanes, and nuclear reactors all have some sort of rudimentary training. Why is there such a psychopathological fear of reading a book rather than inituitively figuring something out? Do you look somehow stupider by reading the instruction manual when you put together your Lego Mindstorm than someone who fumbles around? Is a man who can't intuitively program his VCR somehow less of a man?
Yes, I was strictly following the specifications posted by nokilli.
It was possible. Otherwise I wouldn't have written it, now whould I? But seriously: nothing is impossible in Linux. Nothing. And that is the true power of free software. Always remember that. I really hope my program will serve you well. All of you.
Please don't thank me. I only did my duty as a free software developer and a Slashdot community member.
Thank you. You are very kind.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."