Command Line Life Partner Wanted

emj writes "Craiglist offers an interesting approach to finding a life partner , summmary: "There is a sad truth to the world today. I am part of a dying breed of people known as "shell users." ... Because there are fewer and fewer of us, I must help keep our lineage alive. I am looking for someone to help me do this. I need a woman (obviously) who is willing to raise a child with me in the method of Unix."."

Comments

"dying breed"?

[neiko]

I'm not sure I agree that shell users are a dying breed. Being a young developer (25yo) I and most, if not all, my co-workers are using a shell to develop and run unit debug/trace in. I think the amount of computer users in general has gone up so merely the ratio of shell/gui users has gone down.

Re:"dying breed"?

[MightyMartian]

The vast majority of my programming over the years has been script and utility programming, so it's off to the CLI for that. Having been raised on old TRS-80s and Commodores, graduating into MS-DOS and Xenix, I'm afraid I find the GUI a bit of a pain. You use it because it's there, but if I want to do any non-trivial copying or the like, it's off to the command line.

I can't imagine using *nix without sh or bash. I still prefer CLI apps as well. I use SLRN for my newsreader, because I find it faster, more streamlined and sensible.

I don't think I'm right or wrong. It's the way I do it. I've seen guys that can use the GUI like a finely-tuned instrument, so all the power to them.

Re:"dying breed"?

[smittyoneeach]

After all, who wants to waste precious clock cycles swapping out to refresh some widget?

Nah, CPU/RAM/Video card improvements render this point moot.
The real question is: Who wants to deal with vast amounts of UI library, tons of little form files, and intricate event models for managing all of the user state?
It's the 20% of the app taking 80% of the time, in addition to making all of that sweet logic you wrote kinda hard to use on multiple platforms.
UI stuff, while certainly important, can be some of the least fun parts of a project to work on. What's worse? Printing?

Re:"dying breed"?

[rk]

And who-ever it was who thought tying computationally costly operations to fancy clock cycle consuming progress bars was a good idea should be shot.

Probably someone who was tired of the computational expense of having something run halfway through umpteen times, only to have their users kill the program, because it was "hung". If you've got a progress bar that's consuming enough CPU that it is having an significantly adverse impact on an application's performance, it's either coded horribly wrong, or you're at the very limit of your hardware's maximum capability, and perhaps you should really consider upgrading.

FWIW, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool shell scripting, C, Python and Perl programming command-line Unix elitist snob who uses X11 (or OS X for that matter) as little more than a fancy terminal manager, and have been for almost 20 years. But that doesn't mean I don't understand basic human factors.

I can't help you with Vista, I'm apparently lucky to never have used it. XP is more than adequate for my current Windows needs.

Re:"dying breed"?

[geminidomino]

Amen.

GUIs are for two things and two things only:

1. A container for multiple shell windows (slrn, irssi, mutt, etc..)
2. Using firefox to look at pictures of pretty women-type people.

Re:"dying breed"?

[Vellmont]

I'm not saying that CLI is going to fade away, because IMO it still has lots of advantages, just saying that only unix geeks will think to use it.

I'd say that's because the CLI tools on windows aren't very good.

If I want to copy a file from one computer to another, it's a million times easier to use scp than it is to open up a GUI tool, drag the files around, etc. Same thing for changing file ownership of an entire directory.

Creating a user on the other hand is a lot easier using a GUI. I don't want to have to remember obscure, seldom used commands to assign the right groups, etc.

The mistake people seem to make is that it's an either/or choice. Shell or GUI? No, shell AND GUI.

Re:"dying breed"?

[Anonymous Coward]

"but I prefer the eloquence and expressiveness of the command line."

Wow, that's some mighty fine B.S. you've got there. How do you deal with the smell?

Let's be serious; there isn't anyting special about a command line and refering to GUI based tools as being akin to cavement grunting and pointing is pretty darn retarded. Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.

If you prefer to use a text-based debugger; hey, great for you. Every professional programmer I've met who uses command line tools over GUI tools does it because they are working in an environment that lacks quality GUI tools (or because you really think it makes you 'l33t' - but that's really about as toolish of an attitude as I can imagine). How many Java/.Net developers do you who would choose a cmd window over something like Visual Studio? I've met zero. When you graduate from your toy computers, then you can rant with authority.

If you working on an AS/400 and using a command line tool because THAT IS ALL YOU HAVE; then admit that you use it because it is what is available. But don't look down your nose at people who don't. How about having to access one of these from about 1,000 miles away through a remote connection while you're traveling through an airport on your way to figuring out why the customer's app keeps crashing?

Even if that beast is running virtual machines to support a certain toy OS that can't scale worth a damn so you can get your toy GUI development environment up and running, there's no way you get a usable GUI through an SSH tunnel over a flaky wireless connection.

Re:"dying breed"?

[soliptic]

Er, what?

Maybe YOU don't do any graphic design, video editing, audio production, etc; maybe all YOUR computer use is text-based stuff; I don't see how you can extrapolate that to a blanket statement of fact for the entire world.

Unless you know any graphic designers who use command line photoshop? > photoshop -select 50,101,40,50 -addtextlayer font:helvetica size:17pt antialiasing:crisp text:"Hello" -addlayerstyle styletype:bevel Much better. Right?

Or how about, say, ATC systems? I'm sure it's really easy to spot, at a glance, two planes getting too close for comfort when you're given an 80x25 screen full of numbers, as compared to a graphical representation.

Er... no... doesn't really work, does it. So your +4 insightful is... well... not.

Re:"dying breed"?

[TheRaven64]

Every professional programmer I've met who uses command line tools over GUI tools does it because they are working in an environment that lacks quality GUI tools Another factor is that you can use the command line anywhere. I used to use a couple of GUI debuggers a lot, but when I was debugging my code on a remote machine via ssh (which I do fairly often) I was completely lost. Now I use gdb on both machines and there is no sharp loss in functionality when I switch to the command line. I can now do everything I used to do with the GUI debuggers (and a few things I didn't) in both local and remote environments. Sure, I could have run a GUI debugger over remote X. I actually tried that a couple of times, but it was so slow I eventually gave up and learned gdb. When I'm in a graphical IDE I often use the graphical debugger because it's easier to access, but even then I find myself dropping to the command line when I can't make the GUI tell me what I want it to.

Re:"dying breed"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, CPU/RAM/Video card improvements render this point moot.

I wish people would stop repeating that crap. That is the reason software is bloated and slow. Nobody seems to realize that while they're waiting for hardware to make their code not suck, every other developer is doing the same thing.

Craiglist offers an interesting approach

[Anonymous Coward]

No it doesn't.

his kids will tame him or suffer

[m0llusk]

Most people aren't command line geeks because they have no desire for that. If this person has kids and empowers them then they might become anything, but if this idea of spawning a kind of clone persists then the kids are likely to be constrained, unhappy, and ultimately failures at life.

Re:his kids will tame him or suffer

[Jugalator]

Hm, well I dunno... I read that thing as being written mostly tongue in cheek although he did seem to be looking for a girl on the geekier side who was interested in a dedicated relationship. But the rest seeming more like originality to stand out of the crowd. I don't think we should read too much into it, not that I'm a pro at analyzing these personal ads.

The most Ironic thing

[techpawn]

They admit to being part of a "dieing breed" yet he is still looking for a mate? Darwin is spinning in his grave...

Re:Don't live in the dark ages!

[Keruo]

> A modern computing system is not one that is run from the DOS commandline

Windows 2008 server core is not modern enough for you then? It is run from DOS(actually powershell) commandline.

reminds me of this

[Mr. Slippery]

Reminds me of this old column by Joab Jackson:

Say you want to date a system administrator, or sysadmin for short. (And why wouldn't you? They rake in the phat bux for maintaining office computer networks.) The choice is clear: Go for someone specializing in Unix, not Windows. The Unix sysadmin may be slothful and go missing for entire weekends on a Dungeons and Dragons binge. But it's the Windows sysadmin who'll unwittingly hose you with a dangerous virus. And that's far worse.

What, you might ask, could the operating system a person chooses to spend time with possibly reveal? Everything...Windows is designed for people who don't want to spend a lot of time fooling with their computers. It simplifies tasks, giving us pretty boxes to point and click at.

...

Think about these qualities for a sec. Which would you rather have in a lover? Who would you rather have as an intimate -- someone who takes time to understand your quirks thoroughly, or someone who merely pushes your buttons whenever you malfunction? I'm not saying all Windows NT people are obedient, shallow half-wits driven only by desire for material gain. I'm just saying that if you want to fish a decent specimen from the dating pool, you might be better off starting on the Unix side.

Re:Obvious Fake

[Jellybob]

I know you're joking, but its time to fight the "geeks can't get laid" stereotype.

I don't know if I'm just not in the truly geeky end of the spectrum, but certainly in the area of "professional geeks" (developers, sysadmins, network admins etc.) I know very few who are single, and most of the ones who are don't have much trouble finding women, they just can't really be bothered with the dating game.

There was once a time when geeks were kinda freaky people you'd steer clear of, but that seems to have changed as more people get computers and an Internet connection, and start to find out that we were right about it being useful all along. Sure, it's still almost impossible to explain the job of a software developer to the average computer user, but then I can't comprehend what a professional accountant must do all day.

Re:How this could end up...

[turtledawn]

Tasteless. :)

Not the stupidest way to find a spouse

[Qbertino]

Two people accustomed to often using the Unix CLI for their work/passion are likely to have a lot in common, as using the CLI a) really isn't that common and b) requires a measurable amount of intelligence and mental flexibility combined with precision and foresight.
A specialty like unix cli usage really isn't the worst measurement for finding a partner for life. It definitely holds more water that looks or brand of car.