Reimagining the Windows Command Line

You've asked the question and answered it yourself ;-)

Using a GUI over the CLI is probably preferred for 90% of the tasks 95% of the users typically perform. I don't agree with all the drawbacks you listed, but I can see where they are coming from. The CLI is simply not so great for typical computer users.

That said, a good CLI is absolutely invaluable for power users, system adminstrators, developers, etc. There's only so much you can conveniently do through a GUI, as soon as you need to compose multiple complex actions into a script or perform advanced data extraction, search operations, automate tasks, etc. there really is no alternative for a good CLI.

The funny thing about a powerful CLI is that it isn't very accessible unless you invest quite a bit of time mastering it, but once you do, you'll find out that you can do many (most?) things more efficiently by typing up commands and composing them into scripts. Once you get proficient using the CLI, you'll find yourself using the CLI for all kinds of things you used to do through a GUI before. For example selecting and copying around files or extracting archives, personally I think CLI tools (in my case unix CLI tools) to be much more flexible and convenient than something like WinZip.

But just like most people will never use their computer to write scripts or computer programs, they will also never invest time in learning the CLI. And usually they don't really need to anyway, just like most people don't need (or want) to learn how to change the oil on their car themselves, no matter how easy it is if you know how to do it. It's not something they enjoy learning about, but that doesn't mean changing oil is useless or difficult.

The lack of a proper CLI in Windows 9x and XP has always bothered me a great deal, as a developer and power user. It was one of the main reasons to switch to Linux and later OS X. Apparently these days Windows has a pretty good CLI with PowerShell, but the Windows train has already departed a long time ago for me. But it's still a good thing Microsoft finally decided they had to provide power tools like a CLI, it's one reason less blocking me from every going back to Windows (a lot of others still remain though ;-)

Instead of 20 letters, just type the first couple, tab complete (z-shell makes this fluid) and hit enter. If some directories have a single sub directory, it's just tab-tab-tab and you're at the base.

To get a "visual cue", type pwd or have a setting for your shell that follows your directory path.

You can also set up aliases or shell variables for common paths. This has the benefit of not being cluttered (like shortcuts on a desktop) while allowing you to "cd essays" instead of "cd documents/writing/essays".

Also, there's the benefit of find/grep. If you can't remember where a file is, but you know generally where it is, cd there, find "part-you-remember" or grep -R "some unique text" and you'll get your answer soon enough. This has the benefit over full desktop search in that you get local results, so you may have to only sift through 3 or 4 "README" files instead of dozens.

Sometimes I use a graphical file browser, but mostly for images. For that, I use nautilus. But I can open nautilus from my current directory. For example, to get to my code, I can just "cd project-name; nautilus ." (having set up a variable) instead of trying to navigate there from /.

I'm not saying GUI tools are bad; I'm saying that for many tasks, the command-line is more efficient, but a GUI tool is just a command away.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wish_(Unix_shell)

[1] http://code.google.com/p/conemu-maximus5/