Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

He's completely correct, though. Most screen-oriented programs, in power and flexibility, are closer to pull-down menus with predefined commands than to proper command lines. ncurses is "GUI without the G", not "CLI".

If you're calling a curses program "command line" just because its physical appearance is close to a shell in a terminal... that's like calling a Gtk application a Windows app.

If you're calling a curses program command line because you don't know the difference, the clue is in the name: command-driven and line-oriented - command line. As opposed to keyboard-driven and screen-oriented.

Among other disadvantages, screen-oriented things have this built-in model of forced interaction.

The technical advantages of being CLI don't matter to a powerpoint, but it's still incorrect call it as such.



I feel it's overly pedantic, regardless of the argument.


Maybe, I dunno. But I'd sooner conflate, say, C and Java (something that would never happen, but anyway) than willingly conflate command-line and screen-oriented - the former are different in degree, but the latter are different in kind, you know what I mean?


No, I'm calling it "command line" because it runs on and takes input from the command line.


I don't know what "runs on the command line" means, but as for taking filename arguments... so does Microsoft Word.


Well, it runs on the terminal. But not on the command line. These are different concepts.


By that logic, Windows up until 98 was also a command line application. Doesn't really add up.


Windows Me also used a DOS bootloader, but it was more discrete than it's predecessors.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: