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If you're generally better with GUIs than your CLI, either your CLI sucks, or you're doing it wrong.

GUI dialogs take longer to construct and display than command line stuff. When I hit "Ctrl-O", I wait a bit for the dialog to be presented and become ready for input. Then I start entering commands. Then I hit enter, or tab to the OK box and hit enter, or whatever. Then I wait for the GUI to do its cleanup. Then I wait for it to actually run the command, and then give me a really nice shiny GUI with the same data as the command line, except it takes a couple of second rather than happening basically instantly. You might spent fewer keystrokes in a well-designed GUI, but you're still going to spend more time waiting on things to happen.

GUIs don't have command histories. Most don't have macros or shell scripts. They frequently have sucky keymapping support. You end up having to press tab twelve times to commit a dialog without having to touch the mouse. I can't easily pipe GUI output to grep or gzip or whatever.

Most seasoned programmers prefer the CLI for shell-type operations because it's actually faster and more productive, and gets in your way less, not because we collectively have some disconnect from the reality of how we interface with our machines.




"When I hit "Ctrl-O", I wait a bit for the dialog to be presented and become ready for input."

Dude, even on my netbook that dialog appears instantly.

Some GUIs are slow, but that means their architecture is wrong.

Since my comparison is between the best GUIs and the best CLIs, most of your points don't hold.




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