Yes. Cults are real. At the same time very telling. Some people really believe they are better because they have a different machine than someone else. And that shit runs deep.
In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)
31–40 of 271 posts
Re: In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)
#32The command line is still king. Whenever I see new coders struggle, it usually is because they: - Don't know the context of what they are executing - Don't know about the concept of input and output On the command line, the context is obvious. You are in the context. The working dir, the environment, everything is the same for you as it is for the thing you execute via ./mything.py. Input and output are also obvious.…
>On the command line, the context is obvious.
But CLI contexts are only obvious if the computer user is already familiar with the CLI which biases the learned mind to perceive things as obvious when they really are not.
A lot of CLI commands syntax are based on position instead of explicit argument names.
E.g. creating file system links via CLI has opposite syntax positions in Linux vs Windows:
- Linux: ln srcfile targetlink
- Windows : mklink targetlink srcfile
This gap of knowledge is also why there is copy&paste cargo-culting of inscrutable ffmpeg, git, rsync, etc commands.
E.g. using ffmpeg to covert a DVD to mp4 by manually concatenating *.VOB files has very cumbersome and error-prone syntax. It's easier to use a visual GUI like Handbrake to click and choose the specific title/chapters to convert.
CLI vs GUI superiority depends on the task and the knowledge level of the user.
Re: In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)
#33Me: seems like my sort of thing. Me: navigate to linked website, see wall of text. Me: clicks reading mode Me: *193 - 245 minutes* Me: bookmark to read later; probably not
I ran it through an LLM and asked it to summarize and answer questions about it. Worked great to get the gist.
Re: In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)
#34Because I had to read this before falling asleep I had audio going out 2x so it sounds like a fifties cartoon.
Re: In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)
#35[deleted]
Re: In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)
#36The command line is still king. Whenever I see new coders struggle, it usually is because they: - Don't know the context of what they are executing - Don't know about the concept of input and output On the command line, the context is obvious. You are in the context. The working dir, the environment, everything is the same for you as it is for the thing you execute via ./mything.py. Input and output are also obvious.…
> On the command line, the context is obvious. You are in the context While I share the opinion that the command line is _the one true way_ of computing, I don't think this is really all that true. Computers are alien. GUIs are alien. CLIs are alien. Everything is learned. Everything is experience. Everything is culture. Learning, experience, and culture blind us from the experience of the novice. This is "expert bli…
I mean yeah, you are right, it is learned, but "CLI is the one true way" for me because it is much more powerful than most GUIs I have seen. I am much more productive using the CLI, etc.
Re: In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)
#37Me: seems like my sort of thing. Me: navigate to linked website, see wall of text. Me: clicks reading mode Me: *193 - 245 minutes* Me: bookmark to read later; probably not
I ran it through an LLM and asked it to summarize and answer questions about it. Worked great to get the gist.
I am curious, why is this comment being down-voted? I mean, I would like to hear an opinion against it (not that I care about the points).
Re: In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)
#38The command line is still king. Whenever I see new coders struggle, it usually is because they: - Don't know the context of what they are executing - Don't know about the concept of input and output On the command line, the context is obvious. You are in the context. The working dir, the environment, everything is the same for you as it is for the thing you execute via ./mything.py. Input and output are also obvious.…
>On the command line, the context is obvious. But CLI contexts are only obvious if the computer user is already familiar with the CLI which biases the learned mind to perceive things as obvious when they really are not. A lot of CLI commands syntax are based on position instead of explicit argument names. E.g. creating file system links via CLI has opposite syntax positions in Linux vs Windows: - Linux: ln srcfile ta…
Context isn't the same as syntax?
Yes, command line suffers from discoverability of which different applications (such as ln/mklink) may not be consistent.
It is one of the bigger problems (imho) of the cli but it doesn't go against GPs point.
The command line does have a learning curve (partly because of the above), but it is also quite rewarding.
Re: In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)
#39The command line is still king. Whenever I see new coders struggle, it usually is because they: - Don't know the context of what they are executing - Don't know about the concept of input and output On the command line, the context is obvious. You are in the context. The working dir, the environment, everything is the same for you as it is for the thing you execute via ./mything.py. Input and output are also obvious.…
> On the command line, the context is obvious.
You sound like someone who never tried to write a cronjob script…
Re: In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)
#40The CLI has a massive blind spot in today’s operating systems: it knows nothing useful about events.
Yet events are the primary way anything happens on a computer, whether it’s a user system or a server.