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In The Beginning Was The Command Line, Updated
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Jan 05, 2005 08:23 AM
from the keeping-up-with-things dept.
from the keeping-up-with-things dept.
Unqualified code-monkey Garote submits his annotated version of Neal Stephenson's In The Beginning Was The Command Line, updated to discuss UI design theory and fill in some of the gaps from the last five years. (And yes, he has been granted permission from Neal to do this.) There's plenty more to cover of course: Will the command-line last only as long as the keyboard? How will desktop search technology change our workflow? What about the 3D interface? Scroll to any random paragraph in the essay and you'll find something worth expounding on. What's ahead for the next five years?
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I thought it was something else... (Score:5, Funny)
Talk about a bad UI!
Re:I thought it was something else... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Monty Python jokes aside... (Score:5, Insightful)
The marginalia referred to in this thread don't amount to much; they lack continuity with the article, and come across as the querulous interjections of an adolescent schoolboy. The commentator has a number of valid points (which I don't dispute), but he has a long way to go before he approaches Stephenson's calibre as a writer.
Bottom line: if anybody is going to "revisit" the article, my preference would be for the original author to do so.
Parent
Re:I thought it was something else... (Score:3, Funny)
Best Slashdot sig ever read (Score:5, Funny)
GUIs? (Score:3, Funny)
Hopeful (Score:4, Interesting)
Hopefully, some higher power will pick an OSS desktop, create some interface and application standards and we can all start dumping Windows. Until then, my Linux migration ends at the point where I have to pick gnome or KDE (or even something else).
Which one should I pick and why?
Re:Hopeful (Score:3, Insightful)
Or try Fluxbox if you have an older comp, but it's not very similar to Windows.
pick anything (Score:5, Insightful)
Pick up an ubuntu cd, give it a partition, and use it more than the two minutes it takes to conclude it's not windows.
Seriously. Forget windows is even there for a week. Pretend someone stole your old computer and all they left you with is this weird piece of shit doppelganger that sorta looks like your old pc, but everything's just a little "off."
Accept the fact transitions are not always easy, and give this doppelganger a week of your computing life. Then go back to windows.
And make sure you have some clean clothes handy, because you're going to need a shower afterward.
Parent
Re:pick anything (Score:3, Interesting)
I was (and still am) a windows power user who was going up the very steep learning curve of learning Linux some 5/6 years ago. I could do "some" stuff with it, but it wasn't until my main PC died and I was left with my Linux laptop for a couple of weeks that I all of a sudden Just-Got-It tm
These days all operating systems are all pretty much the same as far as I am concerned, XP is a great desktop, Linux is a great server, Sun is a great number cruncher a
Re:Hopeful (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't look too bad either ;-) My only complaint is with the file manager, so I use Xfe/Xwc instead. It comes in Fedora Core 3 if you don't already have a Linux distro installed.
Parent
As long as the keyboard? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As long as the keyboard? (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't imagine ever having speech recognition being good enough for a programmer, it would be too slow to have to say "cout less than less than quote capitalised Hello comma world less than less than quote semi colon", and it would make the workplace an awful noisy place
But what about the non-invasive "thinking caps" featured recently in a story? Maybe on
Re:As long as the keyboard? (Score:3, Interesting)
And why would that be the case considering how long time it takes to be proficient in typing? Surely, it is possible that an alternative text entry interface would emerge in the future.
For example Dasher [cam.ac.uk] is pretty cool, and there are other (in fact numerous) alternative interfaces. See for example Masui's on-line bibliography [pitecan.com].
Re:As long as the keyboard? (Score:3, Informative)
Experienced users achieve writing speeds of about 34 words per minute, compared with typical ten-finger keyboard typing of 40-60 words per minute.
Experienced dasher users can peak at 34 wpm.. experienced typists can often peak at more than twice that on a qwerty (not to mention a Dvorak layout [mit.edu]). And imagine using Dasher for coding - Dasher works well for writing words, but fails totally with the symbols and syntax used in programming.
Some users might be able to work withou
Re:As long as the keyboard? (Score:3, Interesting)
Or think them?
Or look at something and have the brainwaves converted into words applicable to that which you're looking at (or have bound to that image).
The command line will only be around as long as there is a keyboard... and the keyboard won't live forever.
Re:As long as the keyboard? (Score:3, Informative)
I've tried. You just can't get the same degree of bandwidth and precision of expression from speaking as you can get typing individual characters at a keyboard. Especially if you're trying to code something.
Re:As long as the keyboard? (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you speak continuously for an hour? Four hours?
Parent
Re:As long as the keyboard? (Score:4, Funny)
lol - u r gr8.
Parent
Re:As long as the keyboard? (Score:3, Funny)
A keyboard. How quaint.
</Scotty>
c'mon, you know you were thinking it.
From the 3D Interface Article: (Score:5, Insightful)
What absolute, total, bollocks. Cost of helicopters vs cost of cars has not figured into this tit's thoughts, then?
Not NS's best work... (Score:4, Insightful)
His insistance that Windows doesn't have a command line shows a deliberate distortion of the truth to try to make his point.
Any REAL Windows Admin knows this is false and it's a prime way to identify an Anti-MS zealot.
Anyway, it hasn't stopped me being a fan of NS, but it did disappoint me in a big way.
Re:Not NS's best work... (Score:4, Insightful)
No completion, no reverse-search in history, no pipe filters (and no, pipe more does not count), and so on...
Sure, if you install cygwin you get a lot of the stuff you have on *nix, but this simply proves the point: to have decent commandline tools you have to install a POSIX emulation layer.
Parent
Re:Not NS's best work... (Score:3, Insightful)
Compare that to Linux where virtually every graphical way to accomplish something is usually a wrapper still reading and writing text files behind the scene.
the command line already survived the keyboard (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:the command line already survived the keyboard (Score:3, Insightful)
Note that Picard never specifies Milk and/or Sugar either. The computer is smart enough to know his preferences for that but not smart enough to realize he wants it hot? Pah.. 25th century programmers!!
Re:the command line already survived the keyboard (Score:5, Funny)
You have to specify "hot" because the company that makes the replicators lost a lawsuit.
Parent
The demise of the graphical user interface... (Score:3, Insightful)
IMHO
Future ? (Score:3, Interesting)
It'll still be flat (2D) and people should now realize that what counts is the input.
For years, we only had one focus at a time and this should change, thus allowing drastical changes (imagine if several networkedusers have a focus on an app at the same time... impossible ? who remembers the Acorn "Spheres of chaos" where 4 users could play on the same machine at the same time ?).
So, I'd go for a more practical approach to a 2D interface (I was thinking of some itnerface that would ban both scrollbars and overlapping windows by magnifying the active zone of each focussed elements while reducing the others thus making these still visible, ergo invokable)...
Monad (Score:5, Interesting)
IMHO, it's one of the strangest and most surprising moves in Longhorn.
Real computing (Score:4, Interesting)
When it comes to computing, I started out at the command line. True computing, to me, IS the command line, and I gained the most understanding of computers from it. I prefer to use Linux that way (I don't load a GUI). "Windows is a good terminal" is how I think Richie put it, and although the GUI is here and necessary, real computing will always be from the command line. I will admit Lynx never replaced a GUI web browser for me, but someone who really knows the command line (and therefore the OS) can run circles around the mousey admins....
Re:Real computing (Score:3, Funny)
I remember my ole cobol prof. (Score:5, Funny)
You don't get it (Score:4, Funny)
Re:You don't get it (Score:3, Funny)
Eventually (Score:3, Interesting)
Still flawed, since there is no reference to OS/2 (Score:3, Insightful)
Desktop Search? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can understand the hype about searching for things on other folks' computers (such as on the internet) because I don't have a priori knowledge about where to find some information.
When I store things on my computer, however, I already (at some point) know where that bit of information is. I created my own "filing system" optimized for the way I think. You might say it's some sort of O(1) function to find something (now, navigating to that something might be a little more difficult). The human brain is way better about managing the location of objects than a computer (so far) in terms of retrieval.
Think about it: the word "search" connotes looking for something you either think or know exists somewhere, but you don't know where. If you know where something is, you don't search for it but just go and grab it.
Now, of course there are times when you haven't used something in so long that you might not remember where it is, and I can see how a search might come in handy for that. But if most people use computers like I use them, they use a small subset of the things on their computer very frequently, and the rest is archived away. I would have to say that less than 5% (that's a 95% confidence interval - it's probably way less than that) of my total computing experience (on my desktop) is spent on trying to find stuff.
Does anyone out there know how "desktop search" is supposed to improve the way I do work when most of the time I am either creating new data (programs, documents, etc.) for a specific purpose or playing games? Am I missing something about the power of "searching" in general?
Hardware vs software business (Score:3, Insightful)
The size of the profit (even if I believe his numbers) is irrelevant without considering both the number of units moved and the size of the profit margin. In MS' case, even if they are only making 10 bucks a copy on XP (which I highly doubt), the marginal cost to make it is like 50 cents, so they can essentially print money. However, he's right about the longterm viability of the operating system business; but if he doesn't think that Apple would switch places with MS from a pure business standpoint, he's wrong.
Command shells could stand improvement (Score:5, Interesting)
What's peculiar to me is how crusty and stale most command line environments have become. Most UNIX users swear by bash, which isn't even as nice as 4NT for Windows. Feels like there's a lot of room for improvement here. For example, how about capturing all of the output per command, then quickly allowing you to scroll through a list of previous commands and jump to its output? Or getting away from overly static command line windows and instead having something like a simple text editor, where you can move around in a "document" and press Enter at any time, with the output always appearing below it (some language interpreters work like this). And shell scripting languages are irrelevant these days, so a shell doesn't need to be bulked up with such commands. Just use Perl or Python (or whatever) for that sort of thing.
Note again, I'm not trashing the command line. I'd simply like to see it move forward.
Re:Command shells could stand improvement (Score:3, Insightful)
I do not know 4NT, but from your example, I am pretty sure you do not know a lot about bash or even ksh.
All the features you cite are already present in bash, and then a lot more.
Saying shell scripting language is irrelevant today feels just plain arrogant and uneducated to me.
Did you even hear about the shell commands ? script ? shell editor mode ? screen ?
And bash is not stagnant, bash 3.0 was released some days ago for christ sake, with new features too.
Be careful about using metaphores (Score:3, Interesting)
When comparing a industrial strength drill (hole-hawg:unix/linux) to a normal drill (consumer-drill:windows/mac) the commenter writes:
What's more powerful, a hole-hawg, or a five-speed consumer drill with large grips, a safety shut-off, and a built-in level? The hole-hawg, obviously. But which would you rather use to drill, say, five hundred chandelier mounts in a ballroom?
I have to go with the tool that has a good chance of drilling 500 mounts. I don't trust fancy consumer drills to survive drilling many large deep holes.
Which, I think, also applies to unix/linux. I don't get all misty-eyed and sniffly at the thought of using a shell and good ol' CHUI tools. Nope. I use them because they consistantly get the job done quicker and easier than other tools.
The problem is that a lot of these nifty tools are scary, in meatspace and in cyberspace. They also require some training before use -- a steep learning curve. Take a bolt extractor (looks like a very corsely threaded thich screw with a square end for the wrench). Hand one to the average person and they won't know what the hell its for. But with a little knowledge and another simple tool (a good drill and a bit for metal) its rather useful to take out a broken bolt. What about a cutting torch? Screw up, and you'll be seeing grandma and Elvis. Learn to use it correctly and you'll be able to remove a drum from a vehicle with rusted out brake hardware, or to cut through thick chunks of iron.
Are these tools a little macho? Perhaps some of them (cutting metal with fire is damn fun). But is that why these tools are in use? No, these tools are used because they get the job done.
I have money in the bank, and I spend enough time in front of a monitor to be able to justify the purchase of software tools if they were able to fulfill a need that OS tools could not (and a certain proprietary OS is an excellent software tool for running proprietary games).
This commenter reminds me of someone who got into OSS because OSS was "cool".
Imagine someone who decides that he'll learn vim because hackers use vi (or emacs). He looks at a cheat sheet, figures out what i, a, hjkl, and :wq does, and is content at being a "hacker" for the next six months. Afterwords, he discovers some nice commercial IDE and, sick of the lack of features he finds in vim, decides to go with the commercial IDE. After all, he knows that vim can't lookup man pages for functions, jump to a function declaration, change its indentation style, edit multiple files, integrate with compiler errors, or a host of many other things that the commercial IDE can do. He sits back convinced that those OS lusers are fooling themselves, the same way he fooled himself.
Ignorant young pups... (Score:4, Funny)
In the beginning there were a bank of switches.
AND WE LIKED IT LIKE THAT.
If you couldn't be bothered to translate the error codes from hex and look them up in the manual, who needed ya?
Now scram. It's grandpa's naptime.
Getting work done VS getting thinking done (Score:3, Insightful)
His constant comparisons to cars and drills and toasters miss the mark by a mile. Those appliances are not about extending your mind.
Computers are about amplifying your mind's ability to process information. Large numbers of people agree with each other on how they want their toast prepared, their holes drilled, and their vehicles to work and can safely leave all the decisions about how best to do those things to specialists.
Every person, however, has a different reaction to reading a great work of literature. There is enough overlap between people's experience in reading any given book that people can meaningfully discuss literature with each other, but not so much that we could expect another person to read Moby Dick for us and tell us what it means to us. The only way to know what Moby Dick would mean to you is to read it yourself.
How telling that the annotator didn't want to touch Neal's last section, the left pinky of god, where he points out that this quest for the perfect interface to 'get something done' makes no more sense than a button labeled 'life my life for me.'
You are the only one who can possibly make all the decisions that count as 'living your life.'
I think programming (in the broader sense of understanding the hardware and software's theory of operation well enough to arrange the 'pieces' to carry out an analysis or goal), will become more and more a part of the average person's use of computers, just as reading and writing and thinking in general continue to become and larger part of the average person's life.
I want both! (Score:3, Insightful)
For instance, I have a directory, and I need to copy 10 out of a 100 files. There's no commonality between the ten nor are there any distinguishing characteristics. GUI's excel at this.
Now I want to rename a bunch of files and add a old. prefix to them. That's easy on a command line, but difficult to accomplish on the current crop of GUI's, at least that I've used.
So why slam either. Each is a tool with its own advantages and disadvantages.
Keyboard isn't going away until something more efficient comes along. Sure there will be cooler input devices and they'll have strengths, but for general input into a computer nothing beat a keyboard out side of direct neural interface. It would be nice to see more efficient keyboards become mainstream.
-- fiewl diwor dowe wutie er godist phudo
expounding (Score:4, Funny)
OK I had to try this. Here is the random paragraph:
"The Microsoft Gorilla, on the other hand, cannot be trained. Instead, you must keep rephrasing your directions until the MS Gorilla can comprehend them. He consumes both front seats, lowering the mileage of your car, and blocking most of your view. Though he sounds like a bad deal, MS Gorilla is actually extremely popular, because he looks impressive, drives aggressively, and keeps his mouth shut. If you speak in his limited vocabulary, he will take you Where You Want To Go Today ... especially if he can plow monkeys off the intervening road. However, if you touch anything on the dashboard, or try to haggle with him over the exact route, he may become irritated and casually drive your car into a telephone pole. People learn to not argue."
WOW! What a great image. It does a great job of describing Microsoft's OS too. In fact that is why I don't care for Microsoft. I like to fiddle with the dashboard. I'm always changing the radio station or adjusting the temperature.
Re:voice commands (Score:3, Funny)
Please no! I find it difficult enough making myself understood to other human beings.
Re:And the CLI still rules... (Score:3, Informative)
> explorer.exe/KDE/whatever way to say "change all
> the filenames in this dir to lowercase". Or even
> "rename all these files from *.foo to *.bar".
Krename? http://www.krename.net/Screenshots.11.0.html [krename.net]
For the KDE part that is..
Does this mean we finally got rid of AC? (Score:3, Funny)
3 lines below, AC cuts off the very branch he sits on:
"The UseIt [useit.com] article is 6 years old. The advances in 3D desktops, screen resolutions and HCI devices have improved since then. Link value = 0 --Blade-Melbourne"
Good riddance
Re:Gross Margin (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, Microsoft would never [microsoft.com] get into the hardware [microsoft.com] business [microsoft.com].