it also means that there’s a smooth transition between doing a thing once and doing it a 1000 times (or otherwise automating it), because you’ve got a programming language right there already. no need to look for a “mass-x gui tool” for each x.
oh, and i think (though i have no actual experience with this) that it’s a lot easier to make terminals friendly for disabled people (blind, etc)
The CLI is also a much more reliable environment to provide instructions on how to do something.
Instructing people to click on “this button > tab > menu > submenu > item” is very exhausting for both instructor and reader, it’s language-dependant and less future-proof. Also sometimes the location of some graphic elements isn’t immediately obvious and there are cases where the only way to make sure people understand it is with a video tutorial of sorts. Which is annoying both to make and to have to sit and watch through.
This also makes the CLI better at reporting/diagnosing problems… for a GUI app, if you want to report a bug you have to write down a bible of steps on what things you clicked on, etc. (again, a video ultimately is needed to make things clear). Whereas a CLI app has all that information already in the parameters so you can just provide that as the report (along with any input/output data). Or simply copy the contents of your terminal.
it also means that there’s a smooth transition between doing a thing once and doing it a 1000 times (or otherwise automating it), because you’ve got a programming language right there already. no need to look for a “mass-x gui tool” for each x.
oh, and i think (though i have no actual experience with this) that it’s a lot easier to make terminals friendly for disabled people (blind, etc)
The CLI is also a much more reliable environment to provide instructions on how to do something.
Instructing people to click on “this button > tab > menu > submenu > item” is very exhausting for both instructor and reader, it’s language-dependant and less future-proof. Also sometimes the location of some graphic elements isn’t immediately obvious and there are cases where the only way to make sure people understand it is with a video tutorial of sorts. Which is annoying both to make and to have to sit and watch through.
This also makes the CLI better at reporting/diagnosing problems… for a GUI app, if you want to report a bug you have to write down a bible of steps on what things you clicked on, etc. (again, a video ultimately is needed to make things clear). Whereas a CLI app has all that information already in the parameters so you can just provide that as the report (along with any input/output data). Or simply copy the contents of your terminal.