Command Line Interfaces, Again

I posted a couple of years ago that the command line is the interface of the future. Today I stumbled on a couple of articles that seem to agree with me: Command Line for the Common Man: Command Line Comeback The Power of Command Lines Quicksilver blows away both Apple’s Dock and Microsoft Windows’ Taskbar … Continued

dict, thes & ency

dict is a command that is supplied with most Linux and BSD distributions. If you enter dict foo at the command-line, you get back the dictionary definition of “foo”. Normally several different dictionaries are supplied, including some dictionaries of translation, and it’s possible to look up the word on various online dictionaries too. As counterparts … Continued

HenPlus

For a while, I’ve been using a great little Java-based GUI SQL client called dbVisualizer. It’s a nifty little database management tool that — here’s the good part — supports virtually every database backend under the sun. I use it to manage PostgreSQL and MySQL databases at home and PostgreSQL and Microsoft SQL Server at … Continued

The User Interface of the Future

GreyWyvern wrote: Soon (real soon now) we’ll be progressing to voice-controlled systems. “Copy Document to desktop”, “Empty trash”, “Open Slashdot”. This is precisely an argument for the command-line paradigm! What you are describing is a command-line, with the keyboard simply being replaced with a microphone. Experiment: take someone who is accustomed to using such a … Continued