The command line is a layer of abstraction that could be made unnecessary for programming. You could program in Turbo Pascal without a command line in the 90s
It's definitely GUIs, which is much easier to use for beginners (we're talking about beginners here, not people who have been using command lines exclusively for the last 20 years)
Would you want your kitchen to be limited to plastic spoons and silicone bowls, because that's easy for a 2 year old to grasp? Pots and stoves and knives, after all, are too complicated, and God forbid the knife is metal and the stove is powered.
You can't do useful things and cater for beginners at the same time, because that implies nothing can ever improve beyond what a beginner can grasp. The job of a beginner is to become proficient. They can achieve that through learning, not through expecting rewards just for showing up.
And so they do, and so there are plenty of programming tools and environments aimed at beginners. But, just like you can't expect to make a proper dinner with your kid's toy-utensils, if you want to build nontrivial software, you need to learn suitable tools for that. And the command line the most basic of serious tools.
(Hell, situation in programming is actually quite good for beginners. You can go very far with toys. For instance, people make and sell complex video games in clicker tools. The experience of pushing such tools to the limit tends to shine a light on why programming is complex in general: you're pushing at irreducible complexity. Serious tools like command line exist to help you manage that complexity better.)
In one statement you just revealed your age and experience level.
The general trend in programming has been moving TOWARDS command line interfaces, not away from it. Mac OS didn't even have a built in command line until 2001. Microsoft Windows in the last few years has had its command line functionality enhanced, to the point that the GUI only Server versions of Windows have been stripped back, and now there are CLI only versions of Windows Server.
You can do more now in a command line than ever before, you can do more now in a command line than you could in 2001.
"Everything should have a GUI alternative" has been tried and it has failed. Almost all computer efforts through the 1990s were focused on making everything GUI only.
>In one statement you just revealed your age and experience level.
What are you assuming about my experience level?
I thought it was perfectly clear that the argument isn't "there should be no command line" but that knowledge of the command like should't be necessary for beginners. Just like e.g. knowing assebler shouldn't be (and isn't) neccessary for programming. That's why I put the parenthesized statement above, specifically so you understand what the argument is. Or you could just read what I responded to.
I disagree completely, and I'm starting to see now that you do not see the command line as programming, which is a fundamental flaw in how you're approaching your argument.
The command line _IS_ a programming language. If you do not want to learn it then you do not want to learn programming.
If you do not want to learn it then you do not want to learn programming.
That is simply not true. I have plenty of colleagues that do everything in Visual Studio and never touch the command line and they produce solution to hard problems that are absolutely useful and well written.
You can create and distribute a world-class iOS app without having to touch a command line even once. It is just not necessary. Nothing gets easier if you do.
Because iOS has actual well-designed modern tooling.
Developing iOS apps isn't the be-all, end-all of programming. iOS itself is a consumption platform. It's garbage if you want to actually do anything (and so is Android), because the input bandwidth is severely limited. You don't need a command line on your phone, because there's hardly much you can do with it anyway.
But sit in front of a device with a keyboard - one that's meant for creative use - and suddenly, the command line shines as a force multiplier.
None of that is relevant. iOS is a fully-fledged OS, with at least as much complexity as anything else you'd be programming for.
Yet, to program for it, you don't need to use the command line. You just never need to touch it. It is possible to make a fully productive programming environment where the command line is not necessary, if you just put the effort in to do it like Apple has.
iOS has one of the most pathetic development toolings in existence.
Your statement truly shows how unaware you are of actually good toolings and solutions for software development, and, frankly, you should not say a single word more about software development experience, if only not to embarrass yourself even further.
> The command line is a layer of abstraction that could be made unnecessary for programming.
Wow, if I ever saw a comment on HN that was fundamentally wrong on many levels, this was it.
No, a command line interface is not "a layer of abstraction". A command line interface is an interface. That's it. Instead of pressing a button, you run a command. If you want to pass settings to an app when you launch it, you use the command line interface. If you want to script away a task, you call the command from your script.
That's it. It's not a layer of abstraction. It's an interface. They exist for many good reasons.
Sure, but you're entirely missing the point. Question is, is it necessary for programming? I repeat, to be entirely clear, is it necessary? Not useful, but necessary for a beginner to touch the command line?
> Not useful, but necessary for a beginner to touch the command line?
Do you understand that you're asking if a beginner needs to run or pass a setting or even automate any operation that's relevant to programming?
I repeat, a CLI is an interface. It's an interface to perform an action and/or pass a setting. That's it. What warrants this irrational opposition to an interface?
