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In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)

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412 points conanxin | 1 comments | 27 Jul 24 06:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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ndsipa_pomu ◴[27 Jul 24 12:50 UTC] No.41086243[source]▶
One major advantage of the CLI is that instructions/fixes etc are very concise and can be easily communicated. If someone has a Linux system that needs a known fix, then it's trivial to send someone the commands to copy/paste into a terminal. However, if there's a known fix for a graphical program, then it suddenly becomes much harder to communicate - do you go for a textual instruction (e.g. click on the hamburger menu, then choose "preferences"...), or a series of screenshots along with some text?
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1. gumby ◴[27 Jul 24 18:29 UTC] No.41088405[source]▶
Or even write a script which is just those commands. Meanwhile every step a user as to do is an opportunity to cause a new and different problem.