From: ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: When is a CLI faster than a GUI?
Date: 28 Sep 92 16:38:17 GMT
Article-I.D.: convex.ewright.717698297
Organization: Engineering, CONVEX Computer Corp., Richardson, Tx., USA
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

In <YelNiLW00VAt8Dqm4L@andrew.cmu.edu> fj05+@andrew.cmu.edu (Faisal Nameer Jawdat) writes:

>and most people who claim GUI's are faster take for granted the fact
>that i'd like to do something besides play with the finder all day,
>and the learning curve is there, it's just you're doing it with pretty
>icon's and not nasty % signs - 

Not to mention that the slope of the curve is about ten times lower. 

>a cli is not for a beginning user but
>for an advanced user to do anything significant in a GUI requires so
>much more work than you waste learning a CLI - 

Just saying that, over and over, doesn't make it true.  Any task
that you can accomplish using a CLUNK can be accomplished faster
using a "GUI."  Despite some feeble attempts, no one has yet come
up with an example to prove otherwise.

>because this is the os
>we're dealing with - any app has to be a GAI or it's almost useless,
>but the os can be CLI based because that gives it a lot of flexibility

I have no idea what you mean by "flexible."  Since a CLUNK does
not allow you to do anything that a properly designed graphical
interface doesn't, and is slower to boot, I can't say that it is 
more flexible in any meaningful sense.  

>not that having a graphical basis also isn't a good idea, but to be
>able to type that expression as several posters have is rather
>usefull, 

Most of the posters who typed those expressions got them *wrong*.
Does that tell you anything?

>and aliasing makes it easy to solve the oft quoted seldom
>seen spelling problem (i type ahead, and usually delete before i see
>it on screen because i know what i typed without looking)

Seldom seen?  You just mistyped the word "I" -- a one-letter word! --
three times in succession.  Yet you claim that spelling is almost
never a problem!

>oh, and, you'd have to be really dim or have really deficient manuals
>to take 20 to 30 hours to figure out that string

Oh, and you would have to be really dim to think that that one
string is *all* you have to know to use a CLUNK.  20 to 30 hours
of reading manuals is the minimum you can expect to spend before
you even get started.

>sure
>have you figured on the time taken to write that program?

Have you figured on the time taken to write the CLUNK?  

>or does a good GUI come with a little drag and drop program that will
>figure out every single possible string manipulation i want to do

Know.  We kind of assume you are smart enough to be able to download
things like that from Compuserve, or wherever.  If you're not bright
enough to do that, I doubt your bright enough to learn a CLUNK either.  

>it takes a hell of a lot more than 20 to 30 hours for a novice to
>figure out how to program drag and drop text manipulation for the mac

Bad analogy.  You compare the time it takes to *program* the Mac
with the time it takes to *use* a CLUNK.  The time it takes to
*use* a drag-and-drop application, however, is appreciably less
than the time it takes to *use* a CLUNK command.  And if you have
a drag-and-drop application skeleton, the time it takes to add the
application code to do what you want is about the same as the time
it would take to write a shell script that does the same job.   


>i'd give extreme odds on figuring out how to program text manipulation
>on any machine, but it would take a lot longer on the mac
>another advantage of the CLI:  easier for people to learn to program
>for

People can learn to write Hypercard programs in one day.  Real programs
that do things like graphics.  Please tell me a CLUNK system that's
easier to program than that.


>CLI's give you a smaller base of open-ended options that can be tied
>together into much more powerful and varied options.
>it's easier to do weird things with a CLI.
>thigs like AppleScript are only a half measure

"System 7's Interapplication Communications are more powerful than
anything in the UNIX World."  That's not my opinion.  That's from a
review of System 7 in Byte -- a magazine whose biases hardly run toward 
the Macintosh.  

Of course, you've probably never actually looked at IAC, so you have
no idea what it can do.


>maybe if you're really clumsy...

Not everyone is as perfect as you think you are.

>anyone who does things like this as often as you purport should not be
>allowed to speak with any knowledge on the values of a CLI

Ah, I see!  People who *make mistakes* while typing should not be
allowed to have opinions about the value of interfaces that *allow* 
them to mistype things and then reck havoc with the system because
of it.  Only people who never make mistakes should be allowed to
express opinions about the CLUNKs.

Well, let me modify that a little bit to state: only people who
never make mistakes should have to use CLUNKs. 

>since no one I know is this lame, I can only assume that you, Edward
>V. Wright, are speaking from experience?
>I've been playing with DOS since 7th grade, unix since last year
>i've never done anything as catastrophic as wipe a single directory by

Oops, you just forgot to capitalize the "i" in "I've."  You also
mistyped "UNIX" in lowercase.  Quite a few typos for the guy who's
trying to convince us that he never makes typing mistakes.

>but gee, it's never 99 times out of a hundred because i'm fairly aware
>of what i type when i type it

Two more typos...

>and when i do screw up, i've got backups... backups that take less
>than 2 seconds to retrieve - i do this on the macs too.

Read what I wrote.  I said the user makes that mistake at the end
of a 30-hour work session, when he is dead tired, and hasn't had
a chance to make backups.  Now, he gets to spend another 30 hours
doing it all over again.

>but you can't base your entire argument on the worst case scenario for
>stupid people - you're not the FDA (well you might be - where's convex)

The hell I can't.  Carnegie Mellon may not teach this to sophomore
physics students, but the real world is governed by immutable laws
of nature.  One of the most fundamental is Murphy's Law:  Anything
that can go wrong, will go wrong.  A corollary of this law states
that "A 'worst case' scenario, isn't."  When you get out into the
real world, where there are things like money on the line (and
occasionally less replaceable things, like human lives), you will
learn that.

>but first you have to find which modules to print - eh?

Nope.  Clicking on the function name finds the file (there's no
such thing as a "module" in C) that contains the function for you.

>which means you have to go to every module and chose search and select
>OK

You haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about.  Why is
it that someone who claims that CLUNKs are easy/faster to use than
a Mac never seems to know nearly as much about Macs as he thinks 
he does?

>For that matter, drag and drop programs won't take input on startup
>besides the file, 

Again, you haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about.
Drag-and-drop applications can take input from buttons, command
keys, textboxes, sliders, you name it.  If you had ever used one,
you'd know this.  Of course, if you'd ever used one, you probably
wouldn't think CLUNKs are faster.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy