‘Points & grunt’ or ‘eloquently instruct’

A couple of weeks ago Oliver Quinlan was a guest on Radio EDUtalk. The thing that stuck in my mind the most from the episode was this idea. Oliver has now written a bit more about it on his blog.

The command prompt allows you to use the power of language to interact with a computer. In comparison, clicking around in a desktop environment is akin to pointing and grunting. Getting people to do things by pointing and grunting is OK at first, but as children we naturally put in the effort to learn how to move beyond this to get things done quicker, more precisely and more elegantly.

‘Points & grunt’ or ‘eloquently instruct’ – Language & computers – Oliver Quinlan
I’ve often struggled to explain, even to myself, why I enjoy using the terminal application. This is the best elevator pitch I’ve heard.
I am no command line expert, but I end up using it for small things or interesting experiments most days. I guess my first exposure was on the introduction of Mac OS X in 2001. Af first it was something to use occasionally for system settings that could not be done in other ways. Slowly over the last 15 (eek!) years I’ve used it a bit more and slowly learned. It is not something you need to be an expert to get use from. For example Batch Processing MP3 files is probably not eloquent but it saved me a huge amount of time.
For most of the time I’ve been using the terminal I though of it as a somewhat old fashioned process. It is now fairly obvious that it will be in use for some time yet. This week the news that Microsoft is bringing the Bash shell to Windows 10 brought that home.
It is worth mentioning that there is an amazing amount of information on using the command line on the web. I can’t remember when a search has failed to help me learn.
Elsewhere Oliver recommended Conquer the Command Line as a good resource to getting started. From the MagPi Magazine available as a free PDF.

Featured image: my own, grabbed with LICEcap.