... You can leave? Kidding, but seriously: I have 20+ tmux tabs open right now. I live here; I only run X because I need a browser. (A graphical browser that handles JS; yes I've tried w3m, no it's not quite enough.)
I always question what one's work day involves and how committed they are to their work when they say they hate the command line and avoid the shell. It says, to me, that they really don't want to delve very deeply into how computers work and don't care. If they care, but cannot understand, then I question their competence and whether they need to find another line of work.
I'm a massive command line advocate (to the point that I've even written my own $SHELL) but I don't agree with your point that the command line is how computers work.
The command line is just a UI like any other - GUIs included. The way modern computers work is via API/ABI calls; via kernel syscalls and drivers separating out the responsibility of peripherals. Your command line is just an interface for managing applications that are compiled against libraries that interface with those syscalls - so in that regard using the CLI isn't any different to launching an application via a graphical icon running on a typical WIMP interface. In either case you're not making those API calls from the CLI, you're not manually managing your memory nor any of the important things that an OS does under the hood. All you're doing is using a text interface to fork() a process rather than using a mouse click to fork() a process. The difference being many CLI tools require their config supplied as command line arguments while many GUI tools don't. But even there, there are as many exceptions to that rule as there are examples of it.
> I don't agree with your point that the command line is how computers work.
I said no such thing. My point was that, if one wants to program computers, I would think one would want to be good at their job and delve deep into how their code makes computers do what they do. Showing no interest in learning the command line or the shell makes me question their interest and desire.
What is the problem about not knowing how computers work? I care about well-written and working code. I couldn't care less about technology. In fact, I consider it an unfortunate fact of life that programming is tied to computers.
I don't really understand this comment. Surely to write well-written code you need to understand how computers work. Just like understanding how cars work is important to be competent at servicing and repairing cars.
Saying "it's an unfortunate fact of life that programming is tied to computers" is as weird as saying "it's unfortunate that being a car mechanic is tied to cars". The job exists because of computers and cars - not in spite of it.
If you wanted a problem solving or engineering job that wasn't tied to computers then there are other options, like a mechanic, electrical engineer, mathmatition or working in any of the numerous fields of science. But a the end of the day, you're still going to need to understand the core principles of that field if you want to be effective in it.
Web developer checking in - no, I don't really care about the depths of how computers work. I care about competently developing the web applications my employer asks me to, for which the command line is scarcely necessary.
I'm a web developer, too. I care to know where I can speed things up or minimize things. How the code I write affects how my web applications run and which technologies I should consider or dismiss based on how it might affect the hardware we run with.
Too often, the solution of some is only to throw more hardware at the problem.
