You Don't Need a GUI • Hacker News Board

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#151

Post by axiolite » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 4:44 AM UTC

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?

I'd try "ls /bin" and see if any of the names sounded familiar or possibly relevant. Or "man -k space" which shows "df (1) - report file system disk space usage" on line 24, which isn't a lot of reading.

GUI's aren't always intuitive. Nothing worse than not having the option in your right-click menu because you tried right-clicking in the left "explorer" column, but really needed to open the parent dir then right-click on the folder in the right-hand side. GUIs can be infinitely more difficult/complex.

Back in the Win95 days, I recall a case where someone couldn't figure out how to format a floppy. After struggling for hours, he did a search which found format.exe, and used it. It's hard to discover that you can right-click on the drive to get the option, because there are many things that don't show up there... You can't create partitions or change drive letters in the right-click menu there, for example, but how would you know? You've got to learn the options/capabilities for your system, whether its GUI or CLI.

What a GUI really has going for it, is that it offers a limited set of options, greatly simplifying the exploration. Something like Norton Commander, DOSBox or other limited/restricted shell (which shows only the most common commands) has similar discoverability benefits without the graphics, and still with those cli benefits available to you.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#152

Post by dyingkneepad » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 4:46 AM UTC

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.

ddd (the debugger) has this, and it's how I learned to use gdb.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#153

Post by jcrawfordor » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 4:49 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #137

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…

The systems which did that, TOPS-20 and VMS, lost out to Unix, which didn't.

By nearly the same token, though, one could say that Windows NT, which is for most practical purposes a descendant of VMS, implemented these ideas... and UNIX lost out to it.

I think that some version of this dichotomy has existed at nearly every point of computer history where technology allowed it, and that is surprisingly far back!

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#154

Post by mozey » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 4:49 AM UTC

One thing that really annoys me about the GUI mindset is that developers think it's ok to just change stuff. With CLIs they expect people are using it for automation so changes are done with care. Often when I update my GUI I have to look for info in different places, click somewhere new, or learn new shortcuts. That sucks

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#155

Post by tumblewit » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 4:51 AM UTC

there is also a web browser called ‘links’ that is completely in commandline ... i generally use it in live media during rescue if i need something

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#156

Post by opan » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 5:08 AM UTC

macando wrote: post #70

userbinator wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being away from the computer for two weeks will make you forget 80% of the CLI commands from the author's list. As someone who uses both GUI and CLI, and has taken month-long travels where I don't use a computer at all, I don't think this is true, at least for me. CLI is like a language; once you've really learned, it takes a long time to forget.

Yeah, like a language. However if I ommit a commmmma or mispel or abbreviate smth you'll still be able to understand me. A computer on the other hand...

Very easy to click the wrong thing in a GUI, It can be rather punishing. Keep in mind the buttons are like preconfigured CLI commands, so things can be more catastrophic.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#157

Post by henrikeh » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 5:08 AM UTC

a1369209993 wrote: post #96

drivers99 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?".)

Can you explain more clearly what you mean?

Why does the order of commands or their names have any influence on whether pipes can be used? How do you pipe the output of cp into awk?

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#158

Post by galangalalgol » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 5:09 AM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #91

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ar…

I like cli for navigating directories, and finding and moving files. Using a graphical file manager feels clunky to me. I do use a gui for other things, like I finally switched from vim to vscode, but file management has always felt more natural in the cli.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#159

Post by mdoms » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 5:10 AM UTC

The very first example skips a step, cd into the directory.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#160

Post by aimor » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 5:10 AM UTC

theamk wrote: post #27

unnouinceput wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quote: "..you want to do something complicated that a GUI program can't handle..." Name one thing that a GUI program can't handle, I dare you. Me, on the other hand, I can point you to a trillion dollar business that uses only GUI and not a single CLI, to say the least.

You can write a GUI for anything, so if you are willing to spend enough time searching for software, you can solve anything with GUIs. But the big difference is with CLI, there is no need for third party software, the functionality is right there. Here is a simple task which can easily occur in business: you have a folder with thousands of files named somewhat haphazardly. Copy all the files with have numbers 2011 to…

I think there's a golf game that could be made from these type of real world puzzles.

I would search for "2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019", select everything that shows up in the search results, and copy those to the USB. Wonder what I'd do with millions of files though.