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Has the Command Line Outstayed Its Welcome?
dgharmon writes "The Command Line Interface has its uses, acknowledged Mobile Raptor blogger Roberto Lim, but no piece of technology targeted at the consumer market should ever require that something be done via CLI, he says. Keep it as an option or you can take it out all together. 'If it is there, it should just be there for the IT people or tech support to use when you encounter a problem.'"
Guy is a fucking moron. Thats all.
Mod headline -1, flamebait.
(and the summary is silly, as well—how many popular software products today actually require the end user to run terminal commands?)
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
No. Fucking. Way.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
Sometimes you have to have a user ping something, telnet to something. I know it sucks and it is hard, but basic connectivity tests are what you need. /Love using AppNeta's PathView so I don't have to do this much anymore. //Just need the company to get more testing equipment.
Just a dude. Stuck in IT.
Article = flamebait.
No sig today...
The GUI - Making easy things easier, and hard things impossible. (Seriously, there are still a lot of command line tools like sed and awk which are absolutely invaluable, with no real non-commandline alternatives)
I think that is the key word... a rather hazy that doesn't really mean anything.
CLI isn't just for 'tech support and IT', but most users don't have much use for it. Though some people are just going to like it even if they are 'consumers', there are times where it can be a real time saver for common 'consumer' tasks. Though I do have to agree that no 'consumer' app should actually require its usage at this point.
The light-switch is one of the end-user interfaces for electricity in the house. The wiring behind it is better left to the experts. It's dangerous for the non-initiated to fiddle with it.
Same for the command line. Graphical user interfaces have become the de-facto end-user interface to modern computing devices, to information, to the Internet, etc. The CLI exposes some of the wiring behind it. No need for end users to mess with it or to have to understand it. It can be confusing for them or even dangerous.
The sooner software developers realize this, the better it is for everyone involved.
It may be sad that today's users are not introduced at the same level to the technology that many of us were decades ago, but that's the way things go. We don't expect to wire up our house ourselves, or build our own generators or electric engines. We shouldn't expect that a product for the masses should require in-depth knowledge or even expose an interface that is not really useful for every day users.
*gets ready for mindless hate replies*
Look, I'm not against the command line. It's fine. And I actually would say that every program should have a command line. That said, every program should also have a GUI interface.
A serious problem in linux is that frequently you have to go to the command line to do a lot of things. You should NEVER have to go to command line.
The command line is great for people that have memorized all the commands, know exactly what they want to do, and can run the operations in their sleep. But for everyone else it's a hinderence. They have to do queries and check forums to figure out what the program is called. Then they need to look up the syntax.
It's the opposite of user friendly.
Command line is great for certain things. I Scripting especially is much easier if everything can take a command line. I wish more programs in windows for example could take a command line.
But linux especially needs to offer the GUI as the primary interface for EVERYTHING.
I know the old linux hands disagree. This is why you have adoption problems. And because you have adoption problems many companies don't write software for your OS requiring the open source community to write everything themselves. And of course hardware venders frequently don't release drivers for your OS. Fix the GUI issue and all that will change.
Quid pro quo. We're not asking for the universe here. Just the GUI as the primary interface. Keep the command line for those that prefer it. But you'll never get the adoption up so long as its the secondary interface.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I invoke Betteridge's Law of Headlines here.
No.
And if it wasn't available we would find a way to install it.
Next topic.
CLI is for writing code...?
What happens in your GUI when you have a folder with 10,000 files in it? What if you want to do something with all those files? Are you going to do it one click at a time?
No sig today...
Troll article is trolling. Nothing to see here.
"Mobile Raptor blogger Roberto Lim"
Well I'd assume raptors would be mobile, but I still have no idea why a dinosaur would be blogging, let alone why anyone would care what they thought about CLI vs anything else?
"Just the simple task of separating two kinds of files from a single directory, 'mkdir GIF;mkdir JPG;mv *.gif ./GIF;mv *.jpg ./JPG' and I'm done -- five seconds to accomplish that. How long would it take in a pretty looking GUI?"
Create two directories; sort by file type; drag & drop * 2... done. And it'll deal with mixed case extensions. Don't get me started about Mr. "You can't do that FTP transfer in less than 8 mouse clicks". vs 32 keystrokes. I'm not sure where his maths comes from.
They also don't go into how far you are away from destroying the world with a CLI:
sudo rm -Rf ~/bin
is one keystroke from
sudo rm -Rf ~ /bin
Or just the simple case of "cp a b c/", only you eagerly hit enter before "c/" so you blow away b with no checks.
And who knows what you get when your super awesome smart shell loop isn't escaped properly on a filename with a space, quotes or apostrophe in the name.
GUI or CLI -- do whatever you like -- but don't base your choice on the "quality" of information from the types of people in this article.
CLI is the defacto interface for Google searches. People use it everyday and all day long. Nobody complains that it isn't intuitive.
Typing in a few keywords is not CLI. That's just data input in response to a prompt.
Using the more complex search modifiers does make it more like CLI use as you are driving behavior - but most people do not do that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Damn it, this really bothers me. I'm usually very careful to check my theories and hunches before I post a comment, but I really messed that one up. Now instead of modding me down, like I asked, people are modding it up. Apologies to Roberto Lim and Robin Miller, and anybody who read what I wrote but missed the AC's correction.
I want to blame the Euro soccer finals and copious amounts of alcohol, but I should know better than to drink and post.
Ah, arrogance and stupidity, all in the same package. How efficient of you. -- Londo Mollari
You didn't look at Gnome recently, did you?
Rethinking email
Come on, Gnome is written by a guy with a hard on for Bill Gates, what do you expect? Which part of Windows did they not try to implement? .Net, mono, .asp and other weirdass shit.
He did say he would love to work for Microsoft.
Since they wouldn't hire him, he is doing his best to turn Linux into Windows.
Funny how yesterday's bloated crap becomes today's lean and fast. I still can't stomach Enlightenment, though.
Lets not forget who dominates the computer scene; computer nerds.
No. Really 1000 times no. The nerds make up a very tiny minority of the computer users. The dominating force in the computer scene are people who spend all day playing on Facebook, the people who actually welcome the Ribbon Bar because it's more "user friendly".
You've made one key mistake, .... or you're just seeking job security, I don't know.... The goal of software should be that WE DON'T NEED to set up a CLI script to run grandma through a list of options. If grandma can't use her computer the way she wants without my help then the designer of the software has failed.
In another reply to me someone compared the use of awk and sed to entering functions in Excel. My reply then makes a good example here too. awk and sed will be ready for the consumer when a window pops up giving the user a searchable list of software functions, guides the user through entering the arguments with extensive help, and when you balls it up fixes the function for you.
A consumer should NEVER need to access a CLI. If they do then the software developer has failed, or they are a power user like most of the Slashdot posters here who like yourself are getting very defensive at the prospect that computers should be usable by untrained monkeys.
please remind us where the word 'prompt' comes from... the 'bash prompt' or 'shell prompt'.
you type 'key words' into it and get responses.
why does it work? because its an anlogue of verbal communication. .. which humans have been doing for 10,000+ years.
as opposed to 'poking square things that look like candy' which humans have been doing for 20 years.
since 99.9% of users will not have the permissions to start up an access database, and the "IT crew" will be too busy / underfunded to help them, they will revert to sharing Excel files on sharepoint.
furthermore, since the vast majority of people in these corporations have never been trained in database stuff, and the company will not pay to train them, excel is something that is essentially something 'anyone can use' the basic features of and still kind of understand whats happening without much training.
"These days"? Get real, Microsoft has NEVER had a consistent user interface across their applications.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
"Microsoft has NEVER had a consistent user interface across their applications."
You're forgetting the days of the "Blue Screen of Death." That was pretty consistent.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
When you sudo it from from my cold, dead hands.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I would say from the release of Windows 95 to the release of Office 2007, they were pretty much within their own standard style guidelines for GUI more or less across the board. That would be 12 years, which is a fairly significant amount of time in the computing world.
I'd KILL for an official Control Panel option in Windows to allow me to customize the BSOD screen. Power Ranger Pink anyone?
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
Believing that any linguistically rich environment for interaction between people and computers will be commercially unpopular, the designers of operating systems want u s to live in an infant's world. They show you pretty pictures, and in order to communicate you point at the appropriate picture and grunt.
The most important accomplishment of humanity is language, it is the single most important invention. Without language we would not have culture or technology. But here we are, trying to eliminate language from computer and replacing it with hieroglyphs and symbols.
The only problem with the CLI is the illiteracy fostered by Windows and the still prevailing inconvenience of the DOS like command prompt. Some people think that if there is no GUI for a problem, there is no solution at all. Most people do not even know that you can actually tell a computer what to do instead of clicking on abstract symbols. We humans tell other humans all the time what to do. We left runes and hieroglyphs and symbols millenia ego, but if you tell people you can actually tell a computer what to do they will not known what you mean.
What is so difficult to tell the computer to "find . MyFile" or "whereis firefox" or to "reboot", or to print the current "date"? Or to "sleep 5m && reboot"? or to "wget http://some.server/some.file && poweroff"?
If you tell me, you have to remember the commands, then I have news for you: humans are very good in remember commands (aka words). We remember at least 10,000 words for everyday usage and if you speak multiple languages, that number can go pretty high. So why do you think the CLI is only for "geeks" and a regular user should not use the CLI at all? Is it because you think of "regular" users are stupid and can't learn anything? I watched flight travel agents and McDonalds workers use the CLI all the time. Or is it more that the dominant operating system on desktops have a horrible command line interface?
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
another M$-Windows-like kludge?
Last I checked MS is pushing Server Core (aka GUI-less server install) and powershell everything.
You were saying?
PS: the registry isnt a bad idea, it just has a lot of cruft. Most anti-registry sentiment is based on ignorance.
Maybe thats because the Windows desktop environment tends to be far superior for the end user than the Linux one. Does linux have better updates backend, better patching philosophy, better boot options? Sure, but thats all irrelevant, and if you doubt that the Windows desktop experience is superior you simply dont work with enough normal human beings.
Queue about 50 responses about how X distro with Y desktop environment and Z window manager is superior, but all with curiously absent explainations for how your average joe is going to set that up, much less get support for it when something inevitably doesnt work that they need. Good luck going to the ubuntuforums and starting with "I ripped out Gnome for lxde, and replaced grub with extlinux....."
I spent several years with Ubuntu as a primary distro, and it was both a lot of fun and a great learning experience, but most of that experience came from things like upgrading to 7.04 and spending several days trying to iron out why sound no longer works, or figuring out why Ventrilo wont cooperate with Wine and push-to-talk. The thing is, Im not really your average user and most people arent gonna want to spend days futzing with kernel driver blacklists or compatibility layers. The honest to goodness truth is that with just about ANY problem you could find on a Windows desktop, I could google it and find a technet article, a MS KB, and a ton of forum and experts-exchange answers on it. The same simply isnt true for Linux, and thats partly because of its fragmentation and marketshare.
Linux is great for systems that will be managed by folks who do Linux, and its great when those folks can set up a locked down system for someone else. But as an every day replacement for Windows, to be managed and run by average Joe? Yea, not quite yet.
Just the other day a Linux distro decided that they want to do away with "Upgrade Kernel Without Reboot" feature of Linux
Now this guy wants to do away with CLI
Just what do they want to turn Linux into - another M$-Windows-like kludge?
While they are at it, why don't they import the "Windows registry feature" into Linux, and/or turn Linux into a proprietary closed-sourced OS??
Why can't they just leave Linux alone?
Well... given that I reboot about as often as I get laid, this should increase the number of times I get laid in a year. Where do I sign up?
You didn't look at Gnome recently, did you?
I'd rather one good common way of doing the same thing rather then 4000 different ways of doing the same thing.
The Windows binary registry is actually kind of awesome if you debug and understand how it is used. Each configuration parameter can have permissions. Each read and write to the registry can be easily audited/logged. You can use group policy to enforce permissions on registry keys or set them to certain values. Almost every app uses it, allowing you to enforce policy/set configurations across all your devices centrally. To do the same in *nix, you need to know the configuration paths of all your apps, their compile options, and some method of deploying coniguration changes to them (easier to release your own custom packages for your entire environment)
Wouldn't a proc-fs interface to similar system be awesome?!
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
Linux is great for systems that will be managed by folks who do Linux, and its great when those folks can set up a locked down system for someone else. But as an every day replacement for Windows, to be managed and run by average Joe? Yea, not quite yet.
Not even Windows can be adequately managed by Joe and Jane Average. You need a minimal level of understanding in order to keep any system running - not even talking about keeping it safe. I even get silly questions from the Mac users...
Nah, the real problem with Linux is the same thing it's been for years - lack of critical applications. Sure, these days, any web-based applications will work like a charm... but it's things crucial to your business - in my case AutoCAD, MasterCAM and our Infor ERP system - that prevent Linux on anything but the most basic of machines.
Once those apps get ported to Linux, I think we'd be running it within a couple of years, simply due to the lack of cost and stability(and excellent support for out-of-date hardware).
Users, well, they'll learn whatever it takes to get the job done. CLI is great for some things, horrible for others. GUI is great for some, horrible for others. It shouldn't be one or the other - blend the two. Have a good gui with common options, and a CLI box that can be pulled up for access to the complex and arcane extra features(which perhaps only 100 people in the world use, but for them it's critical).
You mean Windows' mess of deeply nested and illogical configuration options and wizards? Its haphazard collection of inconsistent user interface elements? The way it randomly and inconsistently remaps the file system hierarchy in the user interface? The way plugging in any new piece of hardware starts a hardware installation wizard that hardly ever seems to work and then causes people to go hunting for some CD or driver on the net? The way you need to reinstall Windows every now and then because it mysteriously slows down or bits and pieces of it stop working?
No, I don't think the Windows desktop environment is "superior" for anybody, not experienced users and not novices.
Almost as good as a Control Panel option: add this to your system.ini
MessageBackColor=D
MessageTextColor=C
That should give you bright red on bright magenta, which is as close as you get to Power Ranger status.
I'd KILL for an official Control Panel option in Windows to allow me to customize the BSOD screen. Power Ranger Pink anyone?
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2011/01/11/3379158.aspx
The "Notmyfault" link.
You're forgetting the days of the "Blue Screen of Death." That was pretty consistent.
Hey, you speak like that was in the past. This weekend I installed a (legal, purchased, licensed) copy of Windows 7 Home Premium onto my new machine so I could run games. I installed six games. None of them would run, and of those three failed with blue screens of death: Oblivion, Settlers IV, and Alpha Centauri. What makes that a particularly sour experience is that Oblivion, at least (haven't tried the other two), runs pretty well under WINE (some minor graphics problems, but it's playable).
Apart from that, Windows 7 cannot access the Internet, although Linux running on the same machine can, and although in Windows it can access the rest of my local network and the rest of my local network can access it. Because it can't access the Internet, my newer games won't run. Microsoft's support pages say the most likely reason is that my router is too old to support the modern wizz-bang networking of Windows 7, and they provide an online tool to test your router... but guess what, it only works with Internet Explorer, so if you need it you definitely can't use it, and if you can use it you definitely don't need it.
That's the level of thoughtfulness and quality I've come to expect from Microsoft.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.