Neil Enns - If a cell phone developer said "I'm going to go with Java" what…

When we were over visiting the Tablet PC team, we noticed that Michael Tsang used the command line to do nearly everything. Seemed like a throwback to the DOS days, and thought it'd make an interesting thread here on Channel9.
Who else here lives predominantly in a command-line interface?
If the command is typed, it's a throwback to the old days. If I speak the command into a microphone, it's a futuristic new interface.
I'm a command-line guy at heart for most tasks. For some reason, using drag-and drop and the like seems very crude to me, like trying to get my young children ready for bed. I can't just say "Time for bed!", instead I have to say "get undressed", "put your
clothes in the hamper", "go to the bathroom", draw the water, "get in the tub", "wash your face", "wash your body", and on and on for a couple dozen small steps. That's what I feel like with most GUI interfaces -- I have to take the computer by the hand and
show it yet again how to do a series of sub-tasks to accomplish a larger goal.
With a command-line interface, I can marshal whatever collection of tools I need for the task, and issue a few high-level instructions and the computer will get back to me when it's done. If I have to do this more than a few times, I write a new command to
do it (it's not easy at all to script across a collection of GUI-based tools).
Now granted, there are some opeations that I wish I could use a more hands-on approach, but the current mouse-based approach is still far too crude. I use a tablet exclusively both at home and at work (that is, a standard PC with a tablet/stylus pointing device),
and that helps quite a bit. But I still can't do natural things like selection via circling, or things like that. Dragging is about as advanced as it gets, and that's pretty durned crude, particularly with a corded brick.
The Channel 9 Team wrote:the DOS days, and thought it'd make an interesting thread here on Channel9.
Who else here lives predominantly in a command-line interface?
Bogusrabin wrote:
I think Windows' command-line interface is so _crap_ (if you have ever used UNIX systems) that it's much easier use GUI.
lars wrote:
Dude, just wait for MONAD to hit your desktop. The new shell is going to be sweet.
the best thing about the command line is that most new functionality is accessable reliably from the command line before a UI gets written for it. also, you don't have to wait for the display to refresh to start the next thing you want to do. just type the
command, hit enter, type the next one, hit enter, etc. all while the first one is still running. if you want to keep any errors in a error log, just add 2>>errors.log to the end of the command line.
and my personal favorite... environment variable substring replacement. definitely enables some seriously cool capabilities. gui's can only emulate the command line, but never fully duplicate.
and as far as dos goes, i never wrote batch files until cmd.exe. none of my batch files even work on os'es older than 2k. (and even 2k doesnt run most of them without some changes.) cmd.exe is definitely a lot more powerful than dos ever even dreamed of being.
favorite command? latest directory enumeration:
for /F "delims=\ tokens=*" %%I in ('Dir /tc /ad /od /B %_GET_LATEST%') do if %%I GTR !_CUR_TOP! set _CUR_TOP=%%I
followed closely by my show all menu commands subroutine:
for %%I in (%AROOTOPTS::=%) Do echo. &set CMDITERCOUNT=%%I&call :NewGetOptions %%I numopts
echo.
it lists the 60 or so commands i handle in my utility cli menu script, by menu. why you ask? the ability to configure the debugger, install windows, log in, install private drivers, set up gflags, etc. and start stress on 20 or so machines, with a single mouse
click, from home. yea it took a while to write the script, but i have saved more hours of manual configuration in the last couple years as a result, than there are hours since I was born 24 years ago. so it was worth it, IMHO.