In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)

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.

>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

If one goes back & forth between the 2 operating systems, it's easy to mis-type the wrong syntax because the CLI doesn't make it obvious. On the other hand, using a GUI file browser like Ubuntu Nautlius or Windows Explorer lets a novice create links ("shortcuts") without memorizing CLI syntax.

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.

These days it’s easier to ask ChatGPT for the ffmpeg command line to do the thing you want, imo.