social.outsourcedmath.com

mcc mastodon (AP)
There's a kind of command line carcinization where computer people especially Linux people gradually gravitate to command line workflows because especially on Linux there's just too many times you open the GUI tool, get halfway through the task, and then realize the GUI tool can't actually do what you need and you need to start over with the command line version. When this happens enough times you just go to the command line first rather than potentially waste your time
2 people reshared this
josef mastodon (AP)
i literally do this in parallel sometimes. like i open documentation for the command line thing as well as a GUI for it, and keep snapping my head back and forth between them. of course in reality there are usually 3-4 different GUI frontends which offer varying levels of brokeness for me to compare. usually after half an hour i've got a really good understanding of the pros and cons of each. and also i haven't accomplished the task at all
mcc reshared this.
Sean Eric Fagan mastodon (AP)
As the author of many a command-line utility, I see nothing wrong with this.
Adriano mastodon (AP)
@kithrup The "wrong" thing could perhaps be that the GUI, at least this particular GUI, is now verging on 30 years of age and should probably not lack so many of these functionalities.
Sean Eric Fagan mastodon (AP)
@adriano A lot of macOS' system apps use the same frameworks that some of the CLI tools use, but offer a lot more options. The reason for this is that Apple *hates* having options in GUI tools.
Adriano mastodon (AP)
@kithrup There was, many years ago, a conscious decision in GNOME design to eliminate options "wherever possible" and consolidate on "solid defaults". And they kinda overdid it, especially considering their audience.
@adriano @kithrup This × a million. I know a lot of people swear by GNOME, and that's fine. Diff'rent strokes and all, but for me, I just can't get behind the "less is more" philosophy when it comes to features and functionality. Less is more, to me at least, means more white space, reduce visual clutter, establish visual heirarchy, not "make it so simple, it's incomplete."
Adriano mastodon (AP)
@gordoooo_z @kithrup Ehhh. Personally I’ve used Gnome or its Ubuntu variant for about 25 years now, and I’ve never minded. It works for me. It does have its nags, granted, but I couldn’t say if they’re strictly from Gnome or from Ubuntu’s version.
@adriano @kithrup I get it. We all have our tools and ways of working. If I don't like something, I like being able to make it act how I want it to, rather than learning to accept it as it is. That's just how my brain works, but again, there are many GNOME faithfuls who feel comfortable in that environment, so clearly that's the right environment for them. Choice is a beautiful thing.
mcc mastodon (AP)
@gordoooo_z @adriano @kithrup I have used both kde and gnome, both recently and 20 years ago. I picked Gnome this time because I like the margins between ui elements better.

But now that I'm getting beyond basic use im definitely finding elements of their design philosophy… freakish. In ways I don't remember it being 20 years ago, exactly.
Isaac Ji Kuo mastodon (AP)
@gordoooo_z @adriano @kithrup

Many of the big desktops simultaneously got weird ideas that they had to revamp their desktop UIs (Windows 8, KDE4, GNOME3, Ubuntu Unity).

I don't know what they all were thinking, but I ended up settling on XFCE, which presumably didn't have the resources to revamp everything for no reason.
Christopher McCurdy mastodon (AP)
@adriano @kithrup and that's why I still use KDE, despite not thinking it's particularly great anymore. Every time I try to go back to gnome, I try to configure something, find out I can't (or it's only possible via gconf), then reinstall KDE.
CohenTheBlue mastodon (AP)
@chrismccurdy @adriano @kithrup 2/2
I find most things are doable in Gnome 3 using extensions or editing the config directly with dconf editor. I've used it for 7 years? Probably time to check out i3 again.

Dash to Panel is an important extension. Others are No overview at start-up, Pixel Saver, Quick Close in Overview, User Themes, Gamemode. Debian has packages for all of these, with the format "gnome-shell-extension-*" and some being in "gnome-shell-extensions-extra".
mcc mastodon (AP)
@cohentheblue @chrismccurdy @adriano @kithrup well, I use dash to panel, and I consider it a must-use, but it breaks if you have a touchpad. It assumes a touch wheel, and when it gets the HD scroll events it interprets each tiny pixel movement as a whole wheel click. Also, on horizontal scroll events, it freaks out.

I filed a bug, but stalebot keeps trying to close it. I think I found the bug site in the dash-to-panel source, but it's all uncommented JS, so I don't know what to do with it.
boiert mastodon (AP)
It’s where I was very proud of my brother for getting his disk mounted the way he wanted, himself, using the ‘disks’ gui app.
I’m happy the way things were going and confident of contemporary linux to be able to do most of the basic things the way you’d want to.
mcc mastodon (AP)
@boiert it's nice! i wish i had been able to figure out how to use the disks app however because i was not able without help from mastodon 🙁
boiert mastodon (AP)
I tend to try and constrain myself to using the gui as much as possible, in a way -demanding- things to be achievable that way.
Even though I am able to use the terminal, I use it as little as I can.
I also have an example of where I am totally lost without a gui: parted or gparted ;) @CobaltVelvet
juv3nal hometown (AP)
I'm not a linux person really so if it's something doable with a gui, I'll prefer a gui...

but as a programmer, I'll oftentimes need to call something from within a program or shell script and while there *might* be a way to do that with a gui no way in hell I'm going to figure *that* shit out if a CL way exists.
mcc mastodon (AP)
@suricrasia on windows it feels like more often "there's a gui tool for doing this that is documented as existing by microsoft and it doesn't work, and there's a second gui tool that actually works and it's secret and hidden and when you open it it's using windows 95 widgets"
Dragon-sided D mastodon (AP)
You will never attain Satori
If your hands must constantly leave home position to fiddle with mouse
Windows: do you want to open in Paint3D?

Me: I have no idea how to use that, Paint will do!
@suricrasia Windows 95 widgets being a gui strapped over the top of DOS cli?
I have also been getting this feeling from a lot of Windows workflows ever since PowerShell was introduced...
Leon mastodon (AP)
ooh what if you had a ui framework that exclusively uses command pattern for user input that also had a cli? That way every command is a command. You could pop open a command history window for any app and copy and paste it to a terminal and replicate or script it. That would be sick
I have been using "Unix" command lines since 1985. I was a Fortran / assembly programmer for a living back then, working in marketing for a high-performance computing company. I was dragged kicking and screaming to spreadsheets, mostly because the support folks and managers had no other way to deal with numeric data.

I've never liked GUI tools or their bastard descendants web / mobile apps. They need to exist for people who aren't programmers, but they get in the way of people who are.
mcc mastodon (AP)
@cobweb good news i'm working on a web browser that works in this configuration (not a joke)
Scott Richmond mastodon (AP)
I was 100% sure when I started reading that by "carcinization" you meant the "rewrite CLI tools in Rust" tendency, e.g., `eza` and `fd`.
mcc mastodon (AP)
@scr i am also doing this
ocdtrekkie mastodon (AP)
@suricrasia This is 100% accurate. Microsoft has made it deliberately hard to go straight to Windows 7's style Devices and Printers... but if you want to actually fix a printing issue, it's the screen you need 100% of the time.

It still comes up in search and in the Control Panel, but both are redirected to Settings now. There's an invocation to launch it directly but it's sort of ridiculous.
mcc mastodon (AP)
@kyleha yeah, and vice versa. when someone gives me instructions in a command line tool i just do it. but when someone gives me instructions in a gui tool they are like "open the Palette Inspector dialog" and I'm like the what? what is that? where is it

i like gui better but i have this problem every time 🙁
my favorite is when it turns out the GUI is just calling some command line tool in the end anyway
@stevendbrewer to be fair, some tools like FFmeg are convoluted enough to make a good UI worthwhile 🥲
@nuthatch I will admit that I prefer to use Inkscape than write SVG by hand.
mcc mastodon (AP)
@stevendbrewer @nuthatch *nervously* i… i'm better at doing it by hand
@nuthatch I'm way too sloppy. I used to hand-code a lot of HTML and renderers tend to be extremely forgiving of sloppy HTML. But I've found that isn't true with SVG, and very small mistakes wreck the whole thing.
DB Schwein mastodon (AP)
It took me til Windows 10 before I stopped doing this in Windows! I can't imagine it every going away in Linux.
Max™ mastodon (AP)
this has been the hardest part of learning to use a phone full time
Patrick Wyatt mastodon (AP)
Oh, I see you’ve used git then 😝
mcc mastodon (AP)
@netcoyote *miserably* i don't use git. but i have to tech-support people using GUI git frontends which are even more confusing than command line git
Patrick Wyatt mastodon (AP)
Yeah, source control tools are tough. When I first learned Perforce, many years ago, I just couldn’t even figure out how it worked. Felt dumb. Then someone showed me the command line and it seemed so much simpler. Only like five commands to learn, I think. Eventually I got it.

Then when I first learned git is was so alien. I eventually had to throw out my whole mental model for it being “like Perforce”, and learn from scratch.
mcc mastodon (AP)
@netcoyote I use mercurial. It's basically the same data model as git, but it has an interface
I like it when the GUI tool displays the command it's really using behind the scenes so you can learn from it, tweak it etc.
Greg Bell mastodon (AP)
I thought this was going to end as a joke for how we, like crabs, evolve to use shells
patcanfield mastodon (AP)
Elon may be a genius-But apparently his upbringing has caused some despicability
mcc mastodon (AP)
@patcanfield I don't understand.
patcanfield mastodon (AP)
well, it's way past time for me to explain it to you! I mean, FIVE DAYS!? I have a 35 second attention span at best!
patcanfield mastodon (AP)
Elon doesn't think he's a creep, either. He didn't become this way-geniology(for geniuses)
patcanfield mastodon (AP)
Honestly--and Truly--anybody who says they do is lying
Alex mastodon (AP)
I'd never thought about this before but that probably massively contributes to the GUI workflows remaining incomplete.
mcc mastodon (AP)
@depereo Yeah. The power users construct the GUI workflows for the basic users to use, but they keep using the command line tools, so nobody noticed the GUI workflows don't work and never worked
@Alex
Alex mastodon (AP)
I'm quietly pretty happy and proud of the work I did to learn Linux / cli tasks and gravitate to them for that reason but I'll try to use the GUI tools a bit more, maybe at least submit feature requests or try to add stuff I would need.

Good callout, thanks for highlighting it
Nova🐧✨ mastodon (AP)
and if you're like me who is a power user that also isn't nearly as good at remembering language as spatial stuff you try to use the GUI but that's clunky because not enough time and effort has been put in and it takes an eternity to remember what the cli command is or the 50 commands to find out all the info of a system from different perspectives to assemble a mental model with your limited working memory...

honestly I get why people hate CLI, I just want to DO an action and remembering the magic words is hard so I gotta look it up AGAIN
This entry was edited (2 months ago)
William D. Jones mastodon (AP)
Transmission-Web sadly has this problem, but I dislike CLI interfaces to torrent clients enough that I go between Web when I can, RPC when I don't have a choice.
SpaceLifeForm mastodon (AP)
Exactly. I prefer to avoid random problems when I know it will work at command line.

#Linux #UX
#linux #UX
ShadSterling mastodon (AP)
I used to like how thorough the Windows GUI configuration tools were. But that was way back before they moved everything into the registry and out if the GUI; now I’m glad I stopped using Windows after XP
This entry was edited (2 months ago)
Adam Katz :donor: mastodon (AP)
... assuming there's even a reasonable GUI tool to begin with.

My own story of exodus to Linux, which took place during finals week in response to an unrecoverable BSOD, was that I had a checklist of items on which I still relied on Windows. The last items on that list were Explorer and some games that I knew I'd lose.

Nautilus, Konqueror, and their competitors couldn't cut it. As a result, I went headlong into the command line. This was really good for me. I haven't used a file manager since then.
This entry was edited (2 months ago)
loganer mastodon (AP)
but why are "normies" scared of text?
mcc mastodon (AP)
@loganer because it's a grotesquely unpleasant user experience
loganer mastodon (AP)
introspectively, maybe that's the problem?

see, I don't get it.
I find the terminal to be quite comfortable.

... but that's the problem, I don't get what would be comfortable for the "normie".
@loganer
Maybe because they lack the encyclopaedic knowledge if how the computer actually works, and which command line tool (plus switches) do which task.
Its easier for programmers and sys-admins because they know the tools and how the system is knitted together. Normies don't, and rely on good GUIs to guide them without making catastrophic mistakes that kill the system.
Plus, maybe some folk just don't like lots of typing.
Rhialto mastodon (AP)
@latelesley @loganer Yeah, GUIs have the advantage that they can be much better discoverable. There are good guidelines for that and they exist for quite a while. The original Apple guidelines were pretty good (from the 1980s and 90s I think). But nowadays it often feels like GUIs are made by people who think that "old cannot be good", and they invent all sorts of new stuff (badly). And discoverability goes out the window: you have no idea where you could click or swipe or whatever.
loganer mastodon (AP)
@rhialto @latelesley
it's old because it's good, it has survive the test of time.
mcc mastodon (AP)
@loganer @rhialto @latelesley i don't think surviving the test of time is actually that hard
`Da Elf mastodon (AP)
Thing | Other Thing | +n | KDialog [Yes/No] ...

If I want a GUI output. I don't.
Pseudo Nym mastodon (AP)
@suricrasia

... In a locked filing cabinet, behind a sign saying "beware of jaguar"
Plaid mastodon (AP)
@prozacchiwawa This also happens extensively with Windows in enterprise as well. There’s a lot of stuff that can only be done properly or at scale either via api access or PowerShell (just another means of API access)
Peter Bautista mastodon (AP)
The windows comments are interesting. When I first started programming I preferred Windows and didn't like Mac, because Mac's GUI didn't make sense to me. With more experience I didn't care about the Mac GUI anymore because all my time was spent in the terminal or a browser. Then I tried to go back to Windows for personal use and found it's GUI was now worse than the Mac. So now I'm just Mac with terminal and a browser both for work and personal.
mcc mastodon (AP)
@peterbautista https://mastodon.social/@mcc/113177700637051966

@suricrasia on windows it feels like more often "there's a gui tool for doing this that is documented as existing by microsoft and it doesn't work, and there's a second gui tool that actually works and it's secret and hidden and when you open it it's using windows 95 widgets"

Howard Cohen mastodon (AP)
I do work on the command line because I can capture the command and use them in scripts for automation, or to help in documenting how the system is configured/built. A gui is good for simple things that don't need repetition or documentation, in my opinion.
Isaac Ji Kuo mastodon (AP)
There's also the fact that you can search google or Stack Overflow and then copy/paste/modify in a text editor rather than go through the hassle of tediously following point-and-click screenshot directions.

I think most CLI usage is based on laziness rather than power user elitism.
FKA ZOG mastodon (AP)
then you repeat the task in the command line by hitting the up arrow and hitting enter.

While your GUI using colleagues take another 5 minutes to repeat the task, plus another 15 minutes of screenshotting to document.
glutto mastodon (AP)
I always have a command-line window open. Always. It auto-starts each time I start my computer. Without it running it feels like something essential is missing.
Brisingr05 mastodon (AP)
Sometimes I find TUIs to be a nice middle ground.
Joe mastodon (AP)
Yes, unless I am doing something inherently visual like editing an image or a video, I use the command line. It is more flexible and things I have to do repeatedly can be scripted.
mcc mastodon (AP)
@not2b I often lately find that I am using the command line for video and image editing tasks. Not because I prefer it. Because the GUI tools just either got worse or moved to subscription models
@Joe
sunshine mastodon (AP)
Another reason why more experienced people tend to regard CLI workflows as easier is that when they work imperfectly or break, we have an error message to paste into search instead of a blank screen. (Also, such workflows are wayyy more composable with familiar tools like tee, emacs, grep, sed...)
@suricrasia but you might as well just do it by powershell in the end...
CohenTheBlue mastodon (AP)
There's hardly ever a use case that won't be better served with command line since it allows automation. Possibly Blender is sometimes better to use with GUI? CAD can be automated with python in LibreCAD. I see very few GUI programs that have even basic feature and setting search.
Cassandrich mastodon (AP)
For me it's not that, but that there's no hidden state, no non reproducible interactive inputs, only steps you can write down, see how you got where you are, and redo as necessary. I do this not because GUI is lacking ability to do what I need, but despite GUI often having functionality I can't get at the command line that I end up having to forego.
mcc mastodon (AP)
@dalias this is critical. And cli interfaces are often treated as "contracts" in a way GUIs are not. Half the time when I find directions on how to do a thing in a GUI I discover that either the directions are two years old or my copy of the software is two years old and everything is completely different.

This also means CLI tools retain design mistakes for twenty year periods, but perhaps a badly designed tool is better than an undocumented one, if those are the only choices.
Pendell mastodon (AP)
@dalias at least if the CLI is a static target, and something's broken or dumb, people can figure out a workaround and that workaround will be useful and functional for years - instead of looking up ways to work around some GUI bullshit only to find that issue didn't *exist* two years ago.
@dalias

Updates to our service-side warehouse/stock management tool (and this has been in practically every job I've ever worked) oftentimes include GUI updates and new skins, which serve a dual benefit: they make it more difficult to find things in the first place, and they invalidate, or at least make harder-to-read, much of the documentation which has been painstakingly scraped together through years of experience. And attrition. Mind the dead bodies in that pitfall over there, they're a little ripe.

I guess being a GUI designer who can actually sell their shiny! new skins has to be good work, if you can get it. Kinda makes things hard on the rest of us, though.
This entry was edited (2 months ago)
mcc mastodon (AP)
@ocdtrekkie @LGS @mikey @suricrasia my current plan is to pay whatever you have to pay to get long term corporate support for windows 10, and then when they sunset *that*, I will extrude a crystal shell around myself and never emerge
mcc mastodon (AP)
@ireneista ah, yeah, this was the way I worded it: https://mastodon.social/@mcc/113179132767782133

@dalias this is critical. And cli interfaces are often treated as "contracts" in a way GUIs are not. Half the time when I find directions on how to do a thing in a GUI I discover that either the directions are two years old or my copy of the software is two years old and everything is completely different.

This also means CLI tools retain design mistakes for twenty year periods, but perhaps a badly designed tool is better than an undocumented one, if those are the only choices.

mcc mastodon (AP)
@ireneista @lispi314 @ipsquiggle Applescript was extremely widely supported by third party software in the pre os x era. It helped that although the core GUI primitives were not automatically scriptable, basically all interactions between software and the operating system could be directly harnessed by Applescript. If Mac OS could direct a program to do a thing, then Applescript could also do it.
interesting, ever wondered why is it?
Fish Id Wardrobe mastodon (AP)
Some of the time this is simply because the linux commnd line is more powerful than a GUI *can* be. You're sticking seperate commands together in a way unique to you. what GUI can duplicate—
`head -1 foo* |cut -c1-20 |tar cvzf file.tgz –`?
David Chisnall mastodon (AP)
There’s a related issue that CLIs evolve more slowly. In many cases, the command-line method of doing something is the same as it was 20-30 years ago, whereas the GUI method has changed multiple times over that period. For things I do only once every couple of years, the CLI method is stable.

This is less true on Linux, where companies like Red Hat sell certifications and profit from gratuitously changing CLIs because they make the newer certifications valuable, but on other *NIX systems (and post-PowerShell Windows) it usually applies.
MaineC mastodon (AP)
escalation: people switching to Linux because there's at least an option to switch to the command line, whereas in the OS used before they clicked through UIs and clever tweaking tools to no avail
Barry Schwartz 🫖 mastodon (AP)
Nah, it's because Linux is GNU, and GNU really IS Unix, and on Unix you are SUPPOSED to use the command line.

This is apparent to me because I predate Linux and predate GUIs. The whole IDEA of the Unix shell was to empower the command line. Other command line processors for similar computers did not do that. They merely ran programs.
Other command line processors for similar computers did not do that. They merely ran programs.

Not true of Multics.

but then that was the direct ancestor of Unix.
Barry Schwartz 🫖 mastodon (AP)
@kah0mono It's not true of various IBM OSes for computers of different essential kind, either. One can do database programming in their command languages, and RPG is used the way C is used in Unix.
Barry Schwartz 🫖 mastodon (AP)
@kah0mono C itself is a high level assembler for PDP/11. 😀

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