Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

internetworkers - Re: [internetworkers] WalMart Sun Linux

internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Ilan Volow <listboy AT clarux.com>
  • To: "Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/" <internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] WalMart Sun Linux
  • Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2004 20:34:00 -0400


On Apr 6, 2004, at 2:32 PM, Tanner Lovelace wrote:

zman said the following on 4/6/04 2:16 PM:

On Tue, 6 Apr 2004, Sil Greene wrote:
.:
.:When all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
.:
When all you've got is rock, everything looks like a crackpipe?
When all you've ever used is Windows, command-lines seem like a bad thing.

Actually in this case, I believe it's "MacOS", but close enough.

*shudder*

For general use, a GUI can be nice, but if you want to get anything done
on a large number of servers all at once (and hopefully even from one
remote machine), you absolutely cannot beat a command line. Sorry,
Ilan, but you just can't.

I respectfully beg to differ.

If GUI's are totally awkward for some tasks, one possibility is that they are truly awkward. Or maybe another possibility is that they really aren't awkward, it's just that they're badly designed. How could a GUI possibly be badly designed? Perhaps it was designed by a programmer who loved the command-line, and thought that GUI's were totally awkward for many tasks, and who built the GUI using mostly command-line tools. And once he was finished doing that, the PHB thanked him for swallowing his pride and making a "purty, user-friendly pointy-clicky thing". And then took the gun away from his head.

A command line is nothing more than a prescribed set of actions (often chained to one another). I fail to see how a GUI is incapable of doing this as well. I think its more that the design of existing GUI's has been very limited in scope, largely due to the fact that many of the people tasked with programming them see GUI's as very limiting.

AppleScript, while not exactly the holy grail I'm describing, is a step towards doing with the GUI what was previously done with the command-line. Output from one GUI program can be redirected into another, and people do use it to automate stuff on large numbers of machines.

Please feel free to try to persuade us
differently, but we're coming from different directions (and no, I don't
mean people who use computers vs people who don't, or smart people vs
whatever you want to call them, or normal users vs. power users, etc..).
You might as well get used to the fact that the command line is never
going away, just like written e-mail, or written books. It will
never happen, period.


I'm sure in some parts of North Carolina you can still find some very attractive outhouses.

(watch as this turns into a thread about outhouses)
--
Ilan Volow
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!





Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page