Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > linux.debian.user > #256514

Re: should CLI have a nice UI today?

Show all headers | View raw

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] - view raw

On 2023-03-29 at 10:09, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 29, 2023 at 09:51:13AM -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> 
>>> I think you are being too harsh here. Such a question may come 
>>> genuinely from someone who hasn't experienced the power of the 
>>> CLI, which, once you've taken the firs step gently takes you to
>>> small one-liners, little loops and bigger and bigger programs.
>>> 
>>> It has this seamless "growth path" which helps and entices its
>>> users to get better, something I miss from most GUIs, which 
>>> rather tend to degrade the user to a click machine. I don't know
>>> whether this is inherent to GUIs or just the current "social
>>> convention" underlying actual GUIs.
>> 
>> I think it's the same underlying reasons why programming languages
>> are almost universally represented as text: maybe it's just because
>> of habit or "social convention", but I think there's something more
>> fundamental at play, which make it very hard to make non-textual
>> programming languages (and maybe even formal systems in general).
> 
> Perhaps roughly 3k to 4k years of storing, transmitting and
> retrieving information in written form have a part in it.
> 
> It may be a social convention, but by now it runs so deep that I'm 
> convinced you'll find epigenetic traces of it in us humans.

I think it's plausible/probable that it's not so much about the format
itself, but about the data/meaning/information attached to that format.

Text has much more *nuance* and *detail* attached to it than any
non-text-based programming structure I've ever run across, while also
having more *formality* and *precision* attached to it than e.g.
spoken-word conversations (which have a lot more nuance, because of the
added information channels of tone and inflection and the like).

If you can contrive another format for representing the user's intention
that enables comparable or greater amounts of expressiveness, while not
sacrificing much if any precision or rigor, I suspect that that format
might be able to equal or surpass text for programming, etc., purposes.

Good luck with doing that, though; if such a thing were practical, it
would very likely have been invented long since. Unless it only becomes
practical with a technology that's only become available relatively
recently, but unless e.g. the recent forays into "AI" represent such a
thing, I'm not sure what candidates for such a thing there might be.
(And even those "AI"s are interacting with people through text.)

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.         -- George Bernard Shaw

Back to linux.debian.user | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

should CLI have a nice UI today? coreyh@free.fr - 2023-03-24 12:40 +0100
  Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? Jude DaShiell <jdashiel@panix.com> - 2023-03-24 12:50 +0100
  Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2023-03-24 13:00 +0100
    Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? Tom <tom@virta.be> - 2023-03-24 17:00 +0100
      Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? Javier Barroso <javibarroso@gmail.com> - 2023-03-25 23:40 +0100
    Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? Tom <tom@virta.be> - 2023-03-24 17:10 +0100
  Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> - 2023-03-24 16:20 +0100
  Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? davidson <davidson@freevolt.org> - 2023-03-24 21:40 +0100
    Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? davidson <davidson@freevolt.org> - 2023-03-25 00:20 +0100
  Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2023-03-24 22:30 +0100
    Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2023-03-24 22:50 +0100
    Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2023-03-25 07:40 +0100
  Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2023-03-25 11:10 +0100
    Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2023-03-29 16:00 +0200
      Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2023-03-29 16:10 +0200
        Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? Nicolas George <george@nsup.org> - 2023-03-29 16:30 +0200
          Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? Erwan David <erwan@rail.eu.org> - 2023-03-29 16:50 +0200
            Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? Nicolas George <george@nsup.org> - 2023-03-29 17:10 +0200
          Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? debian-user@howorth.org.uk - 2023-03-30 13:10 +0200
        Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? The Wanderer <wanderer@fastmail.fm> - 2023-03-29 16:50 +0200
          Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? Nicolas George <george@nsup.org> - 2023-03-29 17:20 +0200
            Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? debian-user@howorth.org.uk - 2023-03-30 16:50 +0200
              Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2023-03-30 17:40 +0200
              Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2023-03-31 03:50 +0200
  Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> - 2023-03-30 07:50 +0200
  Re: should CLI have a nice UI today? David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> - 2023-03-30 09:30 +0200

csiph-web