good points guys. thanks!

On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 12:14 AM, Daniel Fussell <[email protected]> wrote:

>  On 01/17/2014 09:31 PM, David Wilcox wrote:
>
> For me, it's not about if you can do any one thing with a linux shell vs a
> gui. For the most part, guis have all the individual functionality of a
> shell. As I see it, shells buy you two things:
>
>  1) Scriptability. Writing a bash script to repeat a particular process
> is *way* easier than anything similar I've seen for a UI. It's also very
> easy to write a bash script to do certain operating system operations one
> after the other. For example, I have a bash script that will start up a
> daemon (one command) and then run a bunch of commands against that daemon.
> 2) Pipeability. I can pipe results of one program to another (for example,
> sort file.txt | uniq -c). Piping gives you endless possibilities on one
> line and ends up making things a bit easier if you know what you're doing.
>
>
>  In layman's terms, GUI's were made to make using a computer something a
> caveman can do.  It therefore mimics the interface a caveman is most
> comfortable with; point-and-grunt:
>
> "MM...Banana...there...give....mmmmmm."
> "MM...Bittorrent Files...there...give....mmmmmm."
>
> It's a simple interface, but not without risks.  When a flagrant error
> prevents a caveman from getting exactly what he wants, he jumps up and
> down, bashes on the nearest office equipment, then grunts and shouts in
> vigorous fashion.
>
> Command-line interfaces were designed by renaissance thinkers, for
> renaissance thinkers.  It is a far more efficient interface for those who
> know what they want, know how to ask for it directly and succinctly, and
> generally refrain from bashing anything but the shell and maybe someone
> else's choice of editor.
>
> There have been a few researchers brave enough to try helping the
> computing caveman into the era of expressive computing.  I happen to have a
> transcript of such research right here:
>
> caveman: "MM....root.....there....give......arraaaagraarahhhh!"
> researcher:  "Come on now, use your words...."
> caveman: "su"
> researcher:  "Good boy, have a banana!"
> caveman:  "mmmmmmm."
>
>
> There is a third, less interesting group of individuals that insist on
> top-posting; these are generally understood to be disestablishmentarians.
> But that's another story for another day.
>
>
> Grazie,
> ;-Daniel
>
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