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In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)

(web.stanford.edu)
412 points conanxin | 5 comments | 27 Jul 24 06:25 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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mg ◴[27 Jul 24 07:50 UTC] No.41085093[source]▶
The 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. Input is what you type, output is what you see. Using pipes to redirect it comes naturally.

Not being natively connected to context, input and output is often at the core of problems I see even senior programmers struggle with.

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1. vegabook ◴[27 Jul 24 11:36 UTC] No.41085897[source]▶
Reductio ad absurdum: we should all just use an interactive assembler. Then you really are "in the context".

There is a level of abstraction that makes sense. What level that is is dependent on your objectives.

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2. skydhash ◴[27 Jul 24 11:49 UTC] No.41085946[source]▶
My first real programming experiences was done through the browser’s console (JavaScript) and IDLE’s REPL (Python). The short feedback cycle works wonder for understanding instead of struggling to the multistep process of C compilation or Java verbosity. I tried my hands at reverse engineering and using a dissassembler like IDA also gives the same immediacy feeling. Great DX for me is either a good debugger or a proper REPL whatever the abstraction level.
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3. vegabook ◴[27 Jul 24 11:53 UTC] No.41085971[source]▶
Agreed. When writing the comment I returned seconds later and added the word "interactive".
4. teddyh ◴[27 Jul 24 12:13 UTC] No.41086064[source]▶
DDT, the shell for the ITS operating system, was also an assembly-level debugger.
5. richrichie ◴[27 Jul 24 14:11 UTC] No.41086719[source]▶
> the multistep process of C compilation

it can be a single make command