[geeks] DST hell

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

On Sun, 11 Mar 2007 22:35:13 -0400
Phil Stracchino <phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net> wrote:

> Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> > Sun, 11 Mar 2007 @ 19:05 -0400, Phil Stracchino said:
> > 
> >> I don't quite understand why you'd need such a thing on Solaris or
> >> Linux, which have a perfectly functional and usable CLI in the first
> >> place.
> > 
> > A GUI is a hell of a lot faster for certain classes of file browsing and
> > manipulation, so it is convienient then.
> 
> OK, I guess I do not find that to be true for me except in special
> cases.  For me, the GUI file browser is the exception rather than the rule.

For me it depends a lot on what I'm doing.

Casual browsing and looking through a lot of image, video, and sound
downloads is a lot easier with the GUI.

The other issue is that now I'm dealing more and more with 16-bit character
sets that make the command line painful at times.

For most of my "work", the command line works best.  I've never been happy
doing something like programming work with a GUI file browser.

I guess most of my structured work, for want of a better way to put it, is
much easier with a command line.

But for the more random desktop type work, the GUI works well, some of them
anyway.

> > You use the GUI until it becomes a liability, and then fire off a shell.
> > 
> > Likewise you can use a CLI until it becomes a liability, and just fire
> > up your favorite GUI file browser wherever you currently are.
> 
> Yup, that's the way around I tend to work, given the choice.  And I
> *very* seldom find myself wanting to open a GUI file browser when I have
> a good CLI there.
> 
> But I realize other people's mileage may vary on that point ...  I was
> being slightly facetious.

The command line really does a poor job when you go outside the 7-bit ascii
no spaces environment in which it was designed.  So far, no one has put any
serious effort into fixing that sort of thing.
 
Of course, part of the problem is that people have stopped writing really
cool command line tools for modern applications.  Everyone writes a GUI now
and just stops there.

That's why I like it when people write code that runs on a command line but
also gives some kind of IPC interface so you can write a GUI for it.

Then you don't get stuck with one or the other.


-- 
shannon          | Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny. -- Unknown