The Command Line - The Best Newbie Interface?

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7 pointsparenthesis3 comments

No. Not in a million years.

Anything that requires typing obscenely cryptic commands in the right order and getting very variable-quality feedback about the results is not user friendly by any definiton let alone newbie friendly. Just because you and I know how to hack the command line doesn't make it easy or good and we shouldn't kid ourselves.

Commands don't need to be obscenely cryptic and if they get too long you can easily teach autocompletion. If you have basic verbal skills, then you know stuff like context, so there should be no problem with the "variable feedback". I used DOS when I was 5 - learning to create text files, run programs, navigate the file system wasn't hard at all. My mom explained to me those things only once or twice. I certainly didn't need to "hack" anything in any sense of the word.

So it goes something like this then: Aunt Tilie wants to go outside so she goes to her desk and writes on a sheet of paper door open then presents it to the door which responds with a paper that says how do I know it is you aunt Tilie some one could have crawled in the window last night. To which she hands the door another sheet of paper with her password.

Riiight. She approaches the door pannel and visually identifies the door's current state and manipulates objects on that panel until it is in the appropriate state then she can open the door.

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