It occurs to me…
That I’m an “old man” in computing terms these days. Why? Well…I was sat in the office earlier, watching a younger colleague play Lemmings for Dos.
Complaints about the graphics, how do I up the resolution, is this a Tandy or a high performance PC and so on were heard.
I had to laugh…Welcome to 1991 again. DOS. SVGA if you were lucky. VGA pixel based games. Command lines, dammit. No, it wasn’t friendly, but it was fast, and it was efficient. Welcome to bare-metal computing. Not your pretty picture based, pointing device driven, highly graphical idiot guide interface with the engaging colours and “wipe your arse” wizards, but the stripped out core of sheer power that was command line.
It was sleek, it was powerful, and it relied on a knowledge of the system and the effects of commands..not like the GUI systems now..it’s all got a bit “engineered by intelligent people, run by monkeys” in some respects.
What brought this on? We’ve been playing with Windows Server 2008 core, and Windows Powershell..and you know, I rather like it..command lines make a return! Reminds me of the DOS extenders of my teens. Kix32 was always my favourite..heh.
Mouse? Bum to that. Pictures? No. Wizards? No. Pure command line fun..something I feel I could get my teeth into. I like command lines. GUI are like web apps such as Dreamweaver..any monkey can use them and make them do things, but if it all goes a bit manky..they’re lost. Doing it is no longer understanding HOW it’s done. So what? You point and click this, and it works..where’s the issue?
The issue is a lot of people don’t understand the background processes of WHY it does what it does. How many times have I been asked questions about “why does my webpage do “x”?”, only to find that while the design view offers nothing, the code view is MUCH more useful to finding out a point of failure…
In servers and OS, “Administrators” have in my view got FAR too cushy with GUIs, Wizards and point and click…if it all goes wrong and you need to use commands in non-gui form..can you? More to the point, can you do it from memory, or do you have to go and fetch a book? I think command line driven servers are a great idea..less bloat, less crap, less idiots calling themselves “technical” even though they’re glorified point and click merchants..
Lets just say that Server08 and Powershell are on my “to play with in depth” list..I mean, I grew up with Vic20, BBC, IBM Model 5150s, PC1640s, PCWs…all command line. Some BASIC, Some DOS 1/2/3, some CP/M+ based…I worked on VAX/VMS, supervising 15 or so command line screens at once..I still used the command line extensively up to Windown NT4 in my server admin role at the time…and I’m sure the new generation of scripting languages can’t be that hard!
I have just started runnig a Linux server and that is all command line and very lean. The whole server including 4 sites with mail etc is still only about 6gig.
I wonder if you have ever played with Linux?
I have indeed..:) Tried quite a few..currently I use Puppy Linux LiveCD for speed, and I’m going to download the new Ubuntu 8.04 to try..although the last 4 releases have worked fine for me as well, so I’m not expecting any shocks.
There’s a slight possibility that SUSE Linux and servers may be a part of my future plans..jury’s still out on that..:)
“cmd” is usually the last used item in the Start > Run box on all my machines - at home and at work. I’m still very much a keyboard jockey and can quite often (read: constantly) bitching about this and that application not being keyboard friendly.
Remember that asset database with the customisable screens we made for that grant maintained school in Shrewsbury? I wrote a Windows version of that a few years ago.