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You Don't Need a GUI

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Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#91

Post by systemvoltage »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #72
userbinator wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, because that's way faster and more convenient than double clicking on an icon. It is if you happen to have both hands on the keyboard. That said, I usually navigate a GUI file explorer using the keyboard too, so pressing Enter to open a file is even faster. (This comment was submitted entirely using the keyboard.)

Even if you move your hands (gasp) off the keyboard to the trackpad or the mouse that is presumably very close by, typing that command is probably not faster and more convenient than double-clicking.

Yes. I am a huge CLI nerd, yet, I cannot be dishonest with myself - GUI is faster in a lot of things.

When copying files from one directory to the other - CLI vs GUI is debatable in terms of speed (I'd still say GUI is faster, but let's assume its debatable). But what if I want 1, 2, 5, 7 and 10th file; not all files? It is remarkably faster in GUI: Ctrl + click files I need and drag+drop. Done. Good luck fumbling around with CLI.

CLI nerds are the most annoying people I've encountered. They're myopically obsessed with their tmux + cli workspace and are not open minded.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#92

Post by lanna »

koolba wrote: post #15
karlicoss wrote: post #11

GUI is better for discoverability of the most common scenarios (I can right-click to see everything that can be done with the file, including some third party programs). But it's bad for composing programs and interoperability, often it's impossible or very hard to automate (how many people are doing UI testing? there is a good reason it's not many -- it completely sucks) TUI/console is very good for interoperability…

> If I don't remember the `df` command... what do I do apart from searching on the internet? You can do that locally on the command line too! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apropos_(Unix)

But what if one doesn't remember the `apropos` command?

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#93

Post by subsection1h »

gruez wrote: post #5

Most the things in this list are things that you technically don't need a GUI for, but a GUI is so much better that doing it in command line is pointless. For instance, you could do all those file operations in the terminal, but chances are you're already browsing files using a GUI file manager so opening a terminal to do those things is pointless. Terminal is great if you want to do something complicated that a GUI…

> chances are you're already browsing files using a GUI file manager

I haven't had a GUI file manager installed on any of my desktop computers since the early 2000s, and the last time I used one regularly was the mid 1990s.

Hacker News in 2021: Where the "hackers" think that "doing it in command line is pointless."

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#94

Post by dlivingston »

Waterluvian wrote: post #85

I think a killer GUI feature that I've never seen would be a log that shows you the text-based equivalent of every action you take.

The 3D visualization software ParaView allows you to capture all mouse and keyboard events by logging each event as its equivalent in their Python API [0].

For example, say that I’m visualizing a 3D scene. Clicking and dragging in the viewfinder changes the perspective of the camera, so this is recorded in the log as something like:

      camera.Roll(45)
      camera.Yaw(45)
      Render()
If more GUI apps had exposed APIs, this would be a trivial feature to add.

[0]: https://www.paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView_and_Python

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#95

Post by subsection1h »

macando wrote: post #58

Once learned the GUI actions are impossible to forget. Being away from the computer for two weeks will make you forget 80% of the CLI commands from the author's list. The reason is simple: the brain can associate the GUI actions to many concepts from the real world. CLI concepts exist on computers and nowhere else. That knowledge is too abstract and too expensive to be kept unused in our brain's cache non-stop.

> Being away from the computer for two weeks will make you forget 80% of the CLI commands from the author's list.

Sweet Jesus, the GUI lovers in this discussion really need to learn how to use computers.

I have a text file that includes several thousand commands that I have run during the past 20+ years. In one column there are the commands with placeholders, and in the other column there are descriptions of the commands. I have a shell function that provides this text file as input to fzf, and the shell function is bound to a key. I press the key, type a few words to find the command I want to run, press enter, and then the command is placed in the command prompt without the description. I can select any one of several thousand commands in 2-3 seconds because I type 120+ words per minute.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#96

Post by a1369209993 »

drivers99 wrote: post #78
a1369209993 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like if you type the name of something (a filename) and hit enter (or maybe tab? space? Whatever the designer comes up with) How about: $ file --help | grep util -u, --utils output utilities related to FILE $ file -u index.html index.html: HTML document, ASCII text, with very long lines cat index.html ed index.html lynx index.html

I meant like index.html And you’d get open, copy, rename, create symlink, delete, compress, etc.

That sounds like a GUI; how do I pipe [open, copy, rename, etc] into sed or awk? (Because the^Wa problem with GUIs is that the answer tends to be "Why would you want to do a wierd thing like that?".)

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#97

Post by hnjst »

xrd wrote: post #9

This is terrific. But... GUIs support the concept of undo. It would be great if all shells indicated the command to undo what you just did, and you could turn off that warning message with an environment variable. And, almost none of these work in the Windows command prompt. I've tried powershell and while there are some great ideas, nothing behaves as I would expect after using bash for 20+ years. These are the reas…

There are plenty of commands that essentially cannot be undone. Let's consider `curl --upload-file ~/.ssh/id_rsa https://dontworry.youllundothat.tk` for example.

Even when it's doable, some of us prefer to risk unrecoverable mistakes if it avoids having to take an extra step for the command we launched to be effective. I don't want to "empty a bin" after a `rm`, I want free disk space, and yeah, it could be almost impossible to undo.

I understand that safeguards around destructive actions or actions cancellation can help UX, however at some point you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#98

Post by BeetleB »

subsection1h wrote: post #95
macando wrote: post #58

Once learned the GUI actions are impossible to forget. Being away from the computer for two weeks will make you forget 80% of the CLI commands from the author's list. The reason is simple: the brain can associate the GUI actions to many concepts from the real world. CLI concepts exist on computers and nowhere else. That knowledge is too abstract and too expensive to be kept unused in our brain's cache non-stop.

> Being away from the computer for two weeks will make you forget 80% of the CLI commands from the author's list. Sweet Jesus, the GUI lovers in this discussion really need to learn how to use computers. I have a text file that includes several thousand commands that I have run during the past 20+ years. In one column there are the commands with placeholders, and in the other column there are descriptions of the comm…

Is this meant for humor?

Don't get me wrong. I personally am a command line person too and I like your setup.

However, contrast:

> Right click and select menu option

with:

> In one column there are the commands with placeholders, and in the other column there are descriptions of the commands. I have a shell function that provides this text file as input to fzf, and the shell function is bound to a key. I press the key, type a few words to find the command I want to run, press enter, and then the command is placed in the command prompt without the description.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#100

Post by jancsika »

I am incredibly grateful that the Chia cryptocurrency simply bundled all the complexity of their client into an electron app and made that available for their mainnet release.

It meant that instead of forcing me to screw around with novel terminology, novel design, and how those relate to a bunch of CLI commands, I could just:

1. Open a window

2. Be presented with a very friendly UI that stepped me through the process of creating a wallet and preparing my machine to mine.

3. Follow the easy to read instructions, without running into any error or any warnings whatsoever.

4. See the message that given my stock setup it would take me approximately 2 months to mine a coin.

5. Immediately uninstall the app.

If I had been forced to use CLI that would have taken me probably another ten minutes, for no gain.

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