Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

In The Beginning Was The Command Line, Updated

Posted by timothy on from the keeping-up-with-things dept.

Unqualified code-monkey Garote submits his annotated version of Neal Stephenson's In The Beginning Was The Command Line, updated to discuss UI design theory and fill in some of the gaps from the last five years. (And yes, he has been granted permission from Neal to do this.) There's plenty more to cover of course: Will the command-line last only as long as the keyboard? How will desktop search technology change our workflow? What about the 3D interface? Scroll to any random paragraph in the essay and you'll find something worth expounding on. What's ahead for the next five years?

2 of 416 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hopeful by BladeMelbourne · · Score: 4, Informative
    Xfce is an excellent choice, although not at widespread as GNOME or KDE.

    • Much smaller download
    • Lower memory usage, responsive UI (ideal on P2, P3)
    • Very simple to use, but powerful enough for most power users

    It doesn't look too bad either ;-) My only complaint is with the file manager, so I use Xfe/Xwc instead. It comes in Fedora Core 3 if you don't already have a Linux distro installed.

  2. Re:As long as the keyboard? by reachinmark · · Score: 3, Informative
    Dasher is pretty useless:

    Experienced users achieve writing speeds of about 34 words per minute, compared with typical ten-finger keyboard typing of 40-60 words per minute.

    Experienced dasher users can peak at 34 wpm.. experienced typists can often peak at more than twice that on a qwerty (not to mention a Dvorak layout). And imagine using Dasher for coding - Dasher works well for writing words, but fails totally with the symbols and syntax used in programming.

    Some users might be able to work without a keyboard, but I can't see a future where nobody will want a keyboard...