[thelist] Developing in Linux

Dave Land land at aol.com
Thu May 15 18:07:40 CDT 2008


On May 13, 2008, at 6:57 PM, Ken Schaefer wrote:

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: thelist-bounces at lists.evolt.org [mailto:thelist-
>> bounces at lists.evolt.org] On Behalf Of Hassan Schroeder
>> Subject: Re: [thelist] Developing in Linux
>>
>> On Mon, May 12, 2008 at 7:34 PM, Ken Schaefer <Ken at adopenstatic.com>
>> wrote:
>>> Ah, the elitist command line snobs :-)
>>
>> ? Appreciating the value of a CLI is "elitist"?
>
> No - it's people who bang on about how good CLIs are. And how much  
> better they are than GUI tools.
>
> It's very akin to the same pathetic debates we have about OSes and  
> other unresolvable topics
>
> Use what is best for the job - it's a tool, not a religion.

I snipped the rest, because nothing else in the message said it as well
as this one line:

Use what is best for the job.

You can't fully experience the Web from the command line, so it's
probably best to use a GUI tool like Firefox or Opera or Safari or
however you roll.

That said, there are lots of very solid reasons to prefer the command
line for some purposes. Here, I stand solidly with Mr. Shroeder.

As to the comment about "elitist command-line snobs", I think that
notion originates with the fact that some people do like to show how
"old school" they are, reading their mail in Pine and editing with vi
(I admit to the latter, not the former). I don't think that's the
case with our good friend Mr. Shroeder, although I suspect that he
has real old-school cred.

Bottom line: Use what is best for the job. Whip up a bash or perl
script if that gets you from start to finish faster and with the results
you need, or scramble around looking for (and installing and learning)
a new GUI tool if that floats your boat.

Peace,

Dave




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