| > Nearly all existing CLIs are much harder to use than GUIs. Software would tend to be easier to understand if it is better documented; GUIs aren't inherently easier. If the computer display specifies what is expected then a CLI might be easier to understand, and documentation also makes it easier. However, what is easier for one user might also depend on what they are familiar with. Someone familiar with a specific kind of CLI or GUI might be able to more easily understand that. I will find it easier to use an unfamiliar computer if it has a command-line interface that I can understand, rather than the GUI. > They will delete your stuff instead of trash it. Yes, although it is not really an inherent issue of CLI vs GUI, but of specific implementations. > You can run commands on the wrong folder or even the wrong machine easily, since you're not directly clicking on objects. I think this is not legitimate. A CLI and GUI will both have to display such things in order to know which folder/machine/objects/etc you want, and at least bash already does display these things (and I would expect that a good quality GUI should also do), so it does not have to be "all in your head". > Even with autocomplete there's a lot of typing involved. If you're not a touch typist, it's a real slog to type that much literally all day, and can even make your eyes and neck tired from glancing back and forth to the keyboard so many times. This is legitimate. However, people who intend to operate a computer a lot, should learn typing if they can. > If you customize any of this behavior, it doesn't look any different, you can't tell at a glance what's in bashrc. It depends on the specific customization. If you modify the prompt then it will look like differently. Customizations are still useful whether it looks different or not. (You can also make other changes to the looks, e.g. changing the font size, which are not a part of bash and are a part of the terminal emulator (or display settings, if the operating system you use handles them like that instead) so would be configured separately.) > GUIs also could be perfectly well scriptable, we could have some futuristic UI where everything was an auto generated UI around drag and drop script blocks or something. I have another idea, which is similar in some ways but is different. You could copy objects between the command-line and GUI in either direction, and program stuff in the command-line to trigger things in the GUI as well. |
GUIs can be a guided experience, the documentation is in the UI itself. There's nothing external to look up, which greatly lowers your productivity unless you have an excellent memory and can do it once and still remember it months later.
CLIs in theory can be, but most things these days assume that you know exactly what you want to happen and the computer is a passive tool that does exactly what you say.
Technically rm could ask for confirmation and then trash, but the confirmation step would get in the way of scripting. You could add a -y flag as some commands do, but if simplicity, scriptability, and maximum efficiency for power users are the goal, you probably won't.
On the GUI you can assume it's interactive, and the generally accepted way of design is to aim for the lowest common denominator, not power users.
GUIs can present unrelated information and make changes to the UI, some users will be annoyed but nothing will break, and those of us without a good sense of space will hardly notice if stuff is moved...
On the CLI as it currently ls and cd are separate actions and combining them would make lots of useless output in scripts. On the GUI, LS and CD are the same thing, double clicking a folder takes you to a new page and there's no such thing as "being in a folder" without the contents displayed.
Making a CLI as safe and discoverable as a GUI would involve reinventing half the entire ecosystem. Possible in theory, but then you'd be maintaining a bunch of stuff on your own, because CLI users seem to like the idea of computers as passive tools for computing, and there might not be much interest.