I kinda miss the text-based word processors from the 80s.
You Don't Need a GUI
121–130 of 439 posts
Re: You Don't Need a GUI
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very true https://i3wm.org/ . I3 is a great WM that allows you to avoid having to use the mouse. That said I now work in the Windows world. I find that if you are using the same tools day in day out then the keyboard is the way to go. If you have to use new tools every other week the GUI is hands down much better. Unfortunately in my role I'm doing exactly that.
For what it's worth, Windows Explorer has very good keyboard support.
I can't disagree there. Unfortunately bespoke manufacturing software barely has a usable gui in most cases.
Re: You Don't Need a GUI
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems like a poor rule. As a dev and systems engineer those shortcuts are codified in my head, but I've noticed other devs won't even know simple ones. I've taken months off and not forgotten them. GUIs change, get deprecated, can vary by medium etc... so the same can be said for them. Generally, whether I'm making a CLI or a GUI, I establish contracts for display, input, and output. This at least allows for som…
I struggle with memorizing CLI commands' parameters and special characters. This happens with git commands too and I use them all the time. Something like CLI autocomplete would be awesome.
Agreed, these are great assets for learning. Personally, I use zsh combined with HyperJS and starship.rs. Its been a very enjoyable experience.
Re: You Don't Need a GUI
#124Earlier 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.
The real problem is navigating to the file... I can tab complete or otherwise hop my way around my hard drive much faster than I can visually find a target to click on (and frankly I am shocked that isn't true of everyone who knows how to use a terminal--obviously I appreciate the "easy for beginners" aspect--I feel like the GUI could only possibly be faster for a contrived use case that would never come up in reality... oh, I have one: if the files you are organizing are all images and they have useful previews! I totally use the GUI file manager to organize photo albums... but of course I am barely using the mouse as I do so ;P).
Re: You Don't Need a GUI
#125You dont need monitor
Re: You Don't Need a GUI
#126As much as I like the command line, I couldn't help noticing from the first 10 or so entries[1] that the "stop" text consists of one of: 1. Drag and Drop 2. Right clicking 3. Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V So these 3-5 things do everything in the list in a GUI, and instead the author wants us to learn 35 different command/syntax combinations? As an aside, I'd like to write an article saying "You Don't Need Github To Write an Arti…
> do it properly with a static site generator.
You don't even need a static site generator. GitHub Pages uses Jekyll behind the scenes, so it converts your markdown to HTML for you. You can even select from a list of themes from the GitHub UI.
Still, the author might not know this.
Re: You Don't Need a GUI
#127Earlier 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.
I can type over 120WPM --- that's less than 100ms per key.
I would've been able to type open and tab-complete the filename in the time it takes to move my hand over to the mouse, move the mouse to the right file, and double-click. The mouse is close, but not as close as the keys under my fingertips.
Re: You Don't Need a GUI
#128A console showing multiple lines in context is already a gui.
Re: You Don't Need a GUI
#129Most 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…
Just about everything in that list I do from a terminal. But I practically live in the thing. I’ve literally had trouble finding my home directory in the Mac Finder UI. Never had that issue in the terminal ~
Finder used to be much more intuitive yet Apple seem to do something on every macOS release that somehow makes it worse.
Re: You Don't Need a GUI
#130GUI 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…
I totally agree, and this is one reason why, broadly speaking, command line applications often turn me off, even though in theory I prefer them for the reasons you laid out. There's a sort of implication that you're not "in the club" if you don't remember this or that flag.
Why then isn't a kind of very simple approximation of a GUI (or, at least, easily-discoverable commands) more common in command line applications? I see no technical reason for the lack of it. Look at something like htop -- it has a sort of "command line version of a macOS menu bar" with each menu selected by a function key. I could easily seeing this idea being extended to, say, being called by the familiar --help flag, or each menu visualizing a sub-menu upon pressing a function key, etc...there's no reason CLIs can't have the same discoverability as GUIs.