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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: 0.2s | 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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gregw2 ◴[27 Jul 24 18:04 UTC] No.41088283[source]▶
Agreed. Poor scripting/replay inherently limits the GUI.

That said, the best late 90s expression of the core advantage of the GUI over the TUI/CLI is that it demands less of the user:

"recognize and click" vs

"remember and type"

That seems very fundamental to me.

I have not seen as succinct expression of tradeoffs for V(oice)UI or L(LM)UIs

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1. mjevans ◴[28 Jul 24 06:32 UTC] No.41091586[source]▶
The 90s UIs all had 'hints' for how to activate UI features using keyboard shortcuts.

Want to know how to copy and paste quickly? It's Right There in the menu you found the action in. Don't know that yet? Alt + E (underlined in Edit) then some other key to jump to the action in the list, or you now see the list, abort the previous command sequence with Esc, and then start memorizing the new shortcut for Ctrl+c + Ctrl+v.