Re: Re[2]: Emacs - was Re: Mail/news software
Hello all there,
On Wed, 3 May 2000, Steve Lamb wrote:
> For me it isn't a GUI/CLI mindset it is simply the ability to do what
> needs to be done. Windows doesn't let me do that in most cases. The standard
> 'nix utilities provide a lot of automation for mundane tasks.
I've been following this thread for some time, and this is exactly the
mail I've always been waiting for, because IMHO that's exactly the point
about the whole discussion.
The first time I had contact with Unix in general was in my soil physics
lecture at university. We've been calculating some models on water and
solute flux in soils on IBM RS/6000 machines with AIX, and as none of us
two students in the course had any knowledge about Unix, the Prof gave us
a short introduction. One thing I kept specially in mind:
We had to remove a directory, so the prof said (in german, I'm translating
into English):
"Just enter rm -rf directory/. rm means remove, r means recursive and f
means force: Do it and don't ask stupid questions" (the computer, not us
students).
So we entered it and the computer did it and didn't ask stupid questions.
Being at that time used to the windoze way of doing things, where you
often have to "struggle some kind of fight" with your computer to get
things done, I've at once been fascinated by the way you tell the computer
in clear precise language, what he has to do, and he does it.
We have been doing other "fancy" (for me at that time) things on the
computers, so this course could actually be seen as a turning point in my
attitude towards computers and OSes. So a short time later I switched to
Linux on my computer at home (doing it quite radically, not that kind of
dual-boot stuff;-).
So to focus on the main point again:
It really isn't the GUI/CLI-matter. I like GUIs. But sometimes things can
be done much faster, easier and more precise on the command line. And this
"being able to choose the way to do things and being able to do things
that have to be done" (And you don't have that in windoze) is one of the
main advantages of UNIX/Linux.
Regards,
Daniel
P.S.: Some might perhaps consider this mail much too long, or much too far
off topic for this list, but sorry: I just had to get this off my chest.
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