[robenkleene]

If you're talking about web developers, then the majority literally are writing Unix daemons[1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...

Again, I'm not talking about what's more powerful, and I'm not saying that everyone works this way, but I am suggesting the majority of developers do need the command line to do their job.

Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any usage statistics for the command line in isolation. But if you look at the most popular technologies, e.g., Node[2], then you can most likely extrapolate that the majority of developers are working with the command line.

[2]: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology-_-...

[pjmlp]

Since we are speaking about Apple ecosystem here, most devs live in XCode.

Just like we used to live on MPW and Metrowerks before.

Scripting is perfectly doable from macros and IDE callable scripts.

[robenkleene]

CocoaPods, Carthage, Fastlane, git, all require the command line, and most teams use some combination of those. Not to mention Xcode literally is just a wrapper around Unix processes like `xcodebuild` and `SourceKitService`. Then there's a whole host of other support command-line utilities for doing Cocoa development like `codesign`, `xcrun`, and `xcode-select` off the top of my head.

Again, I wasn't making argument about where developers spend most of their time. Just that they need the command line as part of their workflow.

[pjmlp]

How many processes an IDE uses is an implementation detail.

The large majority of Apple and Microsoft developer communities live on their IDEs as part of our workflow.

Scripting and automatization can be easily done from the IDE as well, thanks to macros, REPL and build integration points.

Dropping down into a UNIX like CLI is the exception, not the norm for a large community.

Ah, but what about WSL? Well, Microsoft saw a market opportunity to win developers that buy Apple computers to do Linux work, instead of buying laptops from the likes of Dell/Asus/Tuxedo/system76 to start with.

So they are making UNIX devs comfortable on a foreign platform, just like NeXT was built on top of UNIX to take a piece of the pie from the UNIX workstation market being lead by Sun.

Using the shell was never a thing for NeXTSTEP nor classical Mac OS development workflow.

[robenkleene]

You seem to be saying that because developers spend 90% of their time in an editor or IDE and 10% of their time on the command line, that they don't need the command line? I think that's what you are saying with this "dropping down into a UNIX like CLI is the exception, not the norm for a large community"? Because I'm not aware of any "large community" of developers that don't use the command line at all? So the exception is when they actually have to use it? But using something a small percentage of the time of course doesn't mean it isn't important (humans spend a small percentage of time eating and if we don't we die).

Regarding Xcode being implemented by managing processes, my point is that IDE's and text editors have moved to a model of using external processes to implement features. E.g., language server protocol, linters. That iOS bans this type of application is why iOS for programming is a wasteland. The tragedy of that fact is my whole point in this thread.

[pjmlp]

We happen to live in different developer communities, it seems.

[robenkleene]

Yeah, but I'm not arguing whether developers exist who don't use the command line, of course they do. The question is simply whether the majority of programmers use the command line? I'm proposing that they do, unfortunately there's no available data for this point specifically, so we end up falling back to anecdote. But I am still super curious about your perspective on this. From what I've observed anecdotally, and from the most relevant data I've looked at, I'd guess the percentage of professional developers that rely on the command line is at least 80% (I am giving a lot of leeway for Microsoft-stack developers, which I'm not really familiar with, excluding developers using Microsoft technologies, I'd say well over 90% of professional developers rely on the command line). Do you disagree with these estimates? And if you don’t mind answering, where would you put the percent? (I'd also be super curious which technologies developers that don't use the command line are on.)