hardcore cmd line users are lost in time???

vik_k · 2010-04-14 14:58:42

hii guys,

I'm having a linux workshop in my college & regarding that i went to another college for campaigning.
There i met a professor who's been a linux developer for ~10yrs. While talking with him i got his view that he thinks cmd line users are actually holding the computer world from developing, while users using a full blown gui setup (like him, he uses KDE) & only IDEs for development are real gems. Since i'm a cmd line user i found that kinda insulting. I tried to argue with him but he was not ready to listen.

So i just want to know that are there other linuxers who think same (that cmd line should be obsolete) or using cmd line is a matter of pride???

for me, it's actually a matter of pride

Last edited by vik_k (2010-04-14 15:01:13)

Hund · 2010-04-14 15:01:20

I think he doesnt know how to use the terminal, and therefore hates it. It's a fact that the terminal sometimes (most of the time I guess) is a better tool, and sometimes the only option.

Last edited by Hund (2010-04-14 15:03:32)

JohannesSM64 · 2010-04-14 15:18:01

While talking with him i got his view that he thinks cmd line users are actually holding the computer world from developing

That is nonsense.. I would bet 90% of the world's computer users never touch command line software. For most people, it's a thing of the past and replaced by shiny GUIs. Some have never even heard of it. However, I think it still is better in many respects (always faster, can always be automated, pipes/redirection..)

alterecco · 2010-04-14 15:18:27

If he (the professor) has been a linux developer for ~10 years i doubt he doesn't know how to use a terminal. I just suppose there are so many differnt ways of using computers, not everyone can be satisfied by one interface. I guess there actually is a good reason why ppl like gui's, or we would all still be using console apps.

Personally I am from the generation that grew up with the early windows gui's, so I find it a relief to get a powerful terminal... for me the text interface is a step up, not down. I would hope to see new innovative apps for the command line interface, rather than new overblown gui apps.

If you grew up with only text interfaces, I think there might be a good chance you think gui's are the future of computing... It can be so hard seeing beyond oneself (that goes for myself also)...

So, are we command line lovers keeping the computing world from developing... Absolutely not. Are we keeping the gui world from developing? Possibly, yes (to a certain degree I hope so).

In the end, diversity is good, and I doubt we have reached the pinnacle of OS development.

lifeafter2am · 2010-04-14 15:27:11

alterecco wrote:

Personally I am from the generation that grew up with the early windows gui's, so I find it a relief to get a powerful terminal... for me the text interface is a step up, not down. I would hope to see new innovative apps for the command line interface, rather than new overblown gui apps.

Yeah same here. Although some of my first experiences were with MS-DOS, most of it was on Windows 3.1 and up. Plus, I like to know whats happening when I am doing something, and GUIs almost never give you any real information; whereas a nice '-v' switch gives you a lot of information.

Bralkein · 2010-04-14 15:46:46

This is an interesting subject IMO. It's a point of fact that a full graphical display is more powerful than a text-only display, but somehow there has been no GUI system that I have used which provides all of the capabilities of a CLI. The ability to take a disparate bunch of utilities and hook them together to solve some specific problem is amazing, and has no analogue in the GUI world. Drag and drop is the nearest thing I can think of, and it's obviously no replacement.

I use a full KDE setup myself, but I still spend a lot of time tapping commands into a drop-down terminal. Why? Because the CLI still solves some problems much more easily than a GUI. If you learn both, you can use both, and you can do more. Anyone who's serious about using a computer should know both.

JohannesSM64 · 2010-04-14 15:47:05

What I would love to see is a new user interface that closes the gap between GUI and CLI - start with the terminal, but throw away terminfo and escape codes, have more modern keyboard handling and support graphics.

vik_k · 2010-04-14 16:02:45

@JohannesSM64, i agree with you that most people never use command line, even some of my ubuntu friends dont even know how to mount a partition from command line.

I also started my computer experience from windows gui but when i used command line in linux, i just fell in love with the flexibility & speed by the tools provided & eventually i became a DIY guy, using ARCH.

@alterecco, yep, diversity is a necessity. so both GUI & CLI should coexist but GUI users should not think of us as we are some stubborn guys who are not accepting the changes in the world (that the world is moving to GUI setups).

Bralkein · 2010-04-14 16:06:53

JohannesSM64 wrote:

What I would love to see is a new user interface that closes the gap between GUI and CLI - start with the terminal, but throw away terminfo and escape codes, have more modern keyboard handling and support graphics.

Sounds like emacs

skanky · 2010-04-14 16:52:24

are there other linuxers who think same (that cmd line should be obsolete) or using cmd line is a matter of pride???

I think neither. What UI you use should neither hold others up, nor be a matter of pride. It should just be what you're most comfortable using.
That said however, it won't ever just be that. Even in Victorian times there were people who took more pride in their desktop's form, than their work.

drcouzelis · 2010-04-14 17:18:05

Imagine if there was a way to create a GUI application that was as easy to write as a BASH script.

Imagine if there was a way to "pipe" commands in a GUI application, where every object (file, user, contact, output...) was represented by an image somewhere that could be dragged-and-dropped.

Do you wanna know what I think is holding back development? Giant application monstrosities. I don't want Adobe Photoshop; I want a bare window with my image in it, and small separate tools and commands that appear in other small windows that can act on that image. I don't want Microsoft Office; I want a window that looks like a plain sheet of paper with my document in it. If I want to edit it, I open a "typewriter" tool window. If I want to format the layout, I open a separate small formatting tool window.

It's like the Unix "do one thing and do it well" philosophy applied to GUIs.

Bralkein wrote:

It's a point of fact that a full graphical display is more powerful than a text-only display

That sounds suspiciously like an opinion and not a fact.

Spacenick · 2010-04-14 17:30:46

I think it depends on the task at hand and saying GUIs are better is just nonsense. There ar things you really need a GUI for like browsing oder image editing, and there are things the terminal is better at, like managing your system and files and stuff like that. I think when you get used to it the terminal (at least for me) feels much more natural, I always use the comparison that there is a reason why people went from pointing at stuff and making funny noise to a full blown versaitile language. Of course a lot of things can be done with point and click but text is just a more effective connection between your thoughts and the computer, that's why programming languages (at least the serious ones) will always use text. The only thing I see that could potentially beat a command line is having a direct brain<->computer interface.

Skripka · 2010-04-14 17:40:22

vik_k wrote:

hii guys,
I'm having a linux workshop in my college & regarding that i went to another college for campaigning.
There i met a professor who's been a linux developer for ~10yrs. While talking with him i got his view that he thinks cmd line users are actually holding the computer world from developing, while users using a full blown gui setup (like him, he uses KDE) & only IDEs for development are real gems. Since i'm a cmd line user i found that kinda insulting. I tried to argue with him but he was not ready to listen.
So i just want to know that are there other linuxers who think same (that cmd line should be obsolete) or using cmd line is a matter of pride???
for me, it's actually a matter of pride

Use the tool for the task.

CMD is like Latin once was. Differences in GUIs are moot, as the underlying commands are basically the same on most *nix systems.

There is NO reason AT ALL that CLI is "holding dev" activity up. The notion is really nonsense. Was the professor speaking in terms of Windows running as an overlay on DOS versus the NT systems?

Bralkein · 2010-04-14 17:53:42

drcouzelis wrote:

Bralkein wrote:
It's a point of fact that a full graphical display is more powerful than a text-only display
That sounds suspiciously like an opinion and not a fact.

Sorry, I knew I should have rephrased that. When I said a full graphical display is more powerful, I meant it only in terms of what can be shown on the monitor, not in terms of user interaction. I was talking about the fact that in X you can display things which would be impossible in a text-only console, but there is nothing that a text-only mode can display that could not be handled by X. This is obviously a fact, otherwise it would not have been possible to create xterm/konsole/etc.

vik_k · 2010-04-14 17:54:54

@skripka
actually we're going to teach newbies about scripting, system administration techniques, virtualization via kvm & some other stuff.

so he said why are you giving so much emphasis on cmd line techniques & rather teach them about different IDEs & how to code for linux.

here's is the best part,
He advised me to leave "vim" & use an IDE (I was really heart broken by that).

Last edited by vik_k (2010-04-14 18:01:13)

Andrwe · 2010-04-14 18:03:58

IMO you can't really compare GUI and CLI in the matter of which is better.
The reason is the difference between them and there users.
For someone who just know how to turn on a computer it is easier to handle it if he/she can work with it like in real life means pointing on and touching something to start it.
But these persons wouldn't change critical things on there systems.
People who like working with PC like in real life (e.g. my boss) while they also want to change critical parts of there systems use GUI mostly but also change to CLI if they have to because there are some properties you can't change with GUI on all OS (yes on Windows there are also some).
And persons who don't care about using a computer like in real life uses mostly CLI and if they need to because it is easier GUI.

I'm someone who uses both CLI and GUI just depending on the situation. I wouldn't e.g. modify a picture or layout a book using CLI because it would be to troublesome for me.
Something like internet browsing I'm doing depending on the system I'm using if I use my server (no GUI) I'm using elinks and if I'm working with my other systems I use midori, chromium or firefox (depending on the sites I'm vistiting because midori has some problems with some of them).
But if I configure my system I'm just using CLI because for me it is a waste of ressources to use some GUI apps for e.g. changing IP, changing some config-files or editing keybindings of my Openbox.

So the comparison of GUI and CLI depends very much on the user which is working with the system.
But the professor is IMO wrong if he says CLI is deprecated at most if you use Linux systems because the root of it is CLI and that's why there are tasks you can't do using GUI only.
The development of the GUI apps in Linux isn't advanced enough.
And the basis of all GUI apps are CLI commands. Although they are directed to the interfaces like DBus or drivers directly all starts with a CLI.
A big example is try to install a Windows OS without cmd.exe it would never succeed.

Last edited by Andrwe (2010-04-14 18:08:49)

Peasantoid · 2010-04-14 19:29:05

With all due respect to the professor, I think he needs to pull his head out of his arse. Surprising that a 'Linux developer' would think this...

Command-line utilities are the most efficient for *almost* all uses. However, graphical tools have their place. I would never try to watch a video as ascii art, as awesome as it is.

Misfit138 · 2010-04-14 19:49:33

I can think of things that a console is better suited for; system update, maintenance, package installation.
I can think of things that a GUI is better suited for; games, watching video, editing video, editing images.
I use Guake or Tilda drop down terminals. Works great.
Living without a GUI is akin to castrating my machine since most of what I use it for is GUI-centric, but the console is nice. BASH is a great shell.

skanky · 2010-04-14 20:16:01

vik_k wrote:

@skripka
so he said why are you giving so much emphasis on cmd line techniques & rather teach them about different IDEs & how to code for linux.
.

On Linux this is odd as IDEs (& GUIs) tend to be built on cmdline (in Windows it would be the right line to take - though even there things like VS wrap .Net command line - see the output window, for example). The IDEs etc. are relatively simple to learn, especially if you know what's going on underneath. It's always best to start with the fundamental and then allow the higher-level stuff to be used. It helps cope with the law of leaky abstractions (where the GUI app fails to protect you from what's gone on under the bonnet).

Cdh · 2010-04-14 20:23:17

Peasantoid wrote:

I would never try to watch a video as ascii art, as awesome as it is.

Do you consider the framebuffer a "gui"?

There is mplayer -vo fbdev2 that plays a video perfectly on the commandline (if your graphics driver support it).

some-guy94 · 2010-04-14 20:25:17

IMO, some things are better as point and click (eg. most browsing, do you want to keep pressing tab just to click 'Sign in' on a website?), but others can be done faster with the terminal.

Use the right tool for the right job.

fsckd · 2010-04-14 20:48:08

A Linux dev you say? Now with all the confusion in naming, etc. I'd like to clarify if he has ever submitted anything for inclusion in the kernel. Cause I have never heard of a kernel dev who shuns the command line.

If he is a kernel dev, you might learn a thing or two.

If he isn't, prepare for war.

.:B:. · 2010-04-14 21:01:41

People failing to see that taste is something personal and not up for discussion have a mental disability. Period.

Slightly more ontopic: GUIs were designed to lower the treshold and bring computing to the masses. People preferring a command line usually are more of a power user than people preferring a GUI; then again you have computer wizards that like a GUI and do not care about how people think about them (because the 'hardcore' users will think less of them because they use GUI X or Y) and the wannabees that can't really survive in a command line environment but like to pretend they can.

Discussion closed.

lswest · 2010-04-14 21:02:55

I simply prefer the command-line for most things. Sure, I run Openbox/Awesome and a few GUI apps (firefox, skype, thunar), but pretty much everything else I do via the terminal. I just find it to be more to my liking, faster, more efficient, and easier to manage (stick it in screen/tmux and it's safe from most crashes ). Besides, compiling programs from vim in the terminal is (in my opinion) usually a lot better for debugging than to be distracted by all the bells and whistles on most IDEs today.

So I definitely vote for the professor being wrong Give him a link to this thread (to prove we aren't extinct)!

*Edit* I started writing this before the discussion was closed, and I didn't read the last few comments, but I agree, it's nothing against the professor himself, he can use whatever he feels comfortable with. Saying, however, that the command-line users are "lost in time" (at least, I got the impression he said something along those lines), isn't quite right.

Last edited by lswest (2010-04-14 21:09:08)

Ranguvar · 2010-04-14 21:29:53

Perhaps when everything starts to go 3D (not Compiz-style 3D, I mean actual 3D), diehard GUI people (those who know the existence of the shell and just refuse to try it, not talking about mom'n'pop) will begin to realize that 3D is really only good for some specialized scenarios compared to 2D -- and that very same argument applies to 1D (shell) vs. 2D (WIMP GUI).

Arch Linux

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hardcore cmd line users are lost in time???

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