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Telling a Computer to Do Things

91 points · 37 comments · vismit2000

  1. ZeroDayDreamer · · focus · HN ↗
    That philosophical point about what it even means to "tell a computer to do things" is a good one. Sure, clicking around in a GUI is also telling the computer what to do. But there's a huge difference between using someone else's abstraction and building your own from scratch. The article is about that second part - the ability to throw stuff together however you want. With a GUI, you're stuck with whatever the designer thought of. With a shell, you can build just about anything
    1. kalx · · focus · HN ↗
      But you’re still limited by the designer of that shell? Or userspace? Or kernel? Or cpu architecture? I mean, how deep should you go before «it’s however YOU want»?
      1. ryuuseijin · · focus · HN ↗
        There are some really powerful UIs that are extremely flexible, like spreadsheets, or ComfyUI, or certain issue trackers. On the whole however I would say they all still are mostly their own interaction silos and integrations with other programs have to be explicitly built for each app.

        The great thing about a shell is that you can glue together programs that don't know about each other. This is not a silver bullet, with shell programs being text oriented etc., but it does give rise to some powerful possibilities that don't really work with UIs.

      2. sire-vc · · focus · HN ↗
        This is the exact problem with the Unix greybeards smug nature: no matter how low level you go you are always on top of some abstractions.

        Criticising people just because they don't use your choice of tools is just elitism and leaves a bad taste.

        If someone uses a GUI to accomplish their goals that should be complimented not criticised.

      3. ZeroDayDreamer · · focus · HN ↗
        Sure, and at some point you're limited by physics. But "limited by the universe" and "limited by what a product manager imagined in 2019" are pretty different kinds of limits
    2. TheOtherHobbes · · focus · HN ↗
      You're limited by the time, knowledge, and complexity costs of hand-rolling and testing a solution to your problem.

      As soon as commands become even a little non-trivial, those costs mount up.

      1. ZeroDayDreamer · · focus · HN ↗

        [dead]

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