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You Don't Need a GUI

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Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#191

Post by creata »

sethammons wrote: post #82
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…

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 ~

I just use Cmd+Shift+G (go to directory) to get around anywhere in Finder. It's worked out well so far, and I can still use ~ to go to my home directory.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#192

Post by permo-w »

You don’t _need_ a GUI, but if you ever want your program to be used by people who don’t know how to use the command line, i.e. most people, then, in reality, yes you do

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#193

Post by least »

ronyeh wrote: post #174
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…

I like your point about discoverability. What if there was such a thing as a right click menu for command line programs? Like if I type ffmpeg or youtube-dl with no args, it lists the 3 most common ways to use it, and maybe allows an interactive CLI menu where you can build up the correct argument list by answering a few questions. I would love the most useful commands to look like: ffmpeg --resizeVideoTo input.mp4 5…

While not entirely matching your vision for this, TLDR [1] does provide for a similar functionality (discoverability of functions of specific applications).

This doesn't help when you want to map the fuzzy idea of performing a specific action to a particular existing program but it has helped me avoid having to search online for how to perform a particular task with ffmpeg.

[1] https://tldr.sh

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#194

Post by ilyagr »

pkulak wrote: post #183

I don't really like bc. Just seems so old-school, and typing things like "100.0 / 34.2" gives you "2". Is there really nothing better? I feel like someone has to have made some new hotness in Rust by now.

Use 'bc -l', at least on Linux (GNU bc). Then it's suddenly useful. I recommend aliasing bc to 'bc -ql'.

You can alternatively remember to do 'scale=10' before doing anything else in bc.

This isn't a great ad for the article's claim that CLIs are in every way superior to GUIs, is it?

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#195

Post by rntksi »

I agree that CLI is better than GUI

But the examples given doesn't really convince me. Using Finder to move files from a folder to another takes less time than using the CLI, especially if the files you're moving doesn't have anything in common at all and you don't want to move all of it.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#196

Post by fyhn »

pkulak wrote: post #183

I don't really like bc. Just seems so old-school, and typing things like "100.0 / 34.2" gives you "2". Is there really nothing better? I feel like someone has to have made some new hotness in Rust by now.

I've used

  #!/bin/sh
  python3 -c "from math import *; print($1)"
as my calculator for some time now, and it's quite useful. I need to invoke it with quotes though:

  calc '100/34.2'

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#197

Post by Annatar »

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…

what do I do apart from searching on the internet?

On a real UNIX like HP-UX, IRIX, Solaris, FreeBSD or illumos (and any of its distributions), you'd run catman -w as root only once for the lifetime of the system, then run:

  man -k "disk space"
and then you'd search for SEE ALSO with "/", eventually you'd run into df(1), under the very bad presumption that it isn't the first hit.

  EXAMPLE (Solaris 10, identical for illumos / SmartOS)
  > man -k "disk space"
  cfsadmin        cfsadmin (1m)   - administer disk space used for caching file systems with the Cache File-System (CacheFS)
  df              df (1b)         - display status of disk space on file systems
  df_ufs          df_ufs (1m)     - report free disk space on ufs file systems
  snmpdf          snmpdf (1m)     - get a listing of disk space usage on a remote machine by means of SNMP
  space           space (4)       - disk space requirement file
  df              df (1)          - report file system disk space usage
  df              df (1gnu)       - report file system disk space usage
...on a real UNIX, manual pages are THE resource, they are very comprehensive because they were written by professional documentation departments, respectively professional technical writers in those departments working with the actual engineers who developed the software.

The manual page system on a real UNIX is designed to locate exactly the type of information you would be looking for quickly, efficiently and most importantly, consistently.

It's GNU/Linux manual pages that are utter garbage, ergo switch to a system like SmartOS and never look back.

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#198

Post by inb4_cancelled »

subsection1h wrote: post #93
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."

Anyone know about a place like Hacker News, but without the gatekeeping?

Re: You Don't Need a GUI

#199

Post by Annatar »

lanna wrote: post #92
koolba wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Then that person is the wrong person for the job.
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