[TUHS] evolution of the cli

[Cameron Míċeál Tyre via TUHS]

Andy,

Wow, you've written what was stuck in my head but you've written it way more eloquently than I could have. Also thank you for educating me on the Shem HaMephorash.

I was guilty of drooling over the new upcoming GUIs in the late 1980s and wishing my system at the time had enough memory to run them better. Instead of completing college essays and projects on text-based editors that worked just fine, I wasted time running GEM desktop even though my system struggled with only 512 kB of memory.

With wisdom since gained and the magic of hindsight, I've taken to reversing my behavior from back then and, being a fairly simple guy, tools such as ed, despite being simpler, actually make me more productive because the only thing on the screen is what I've typed, nothing else to distract.

Cameron



Andy wrote:

I have to agree with Mark. It is too verbose and smells more like a modern
programming language than a shell language.


I tend to simplify things and throughout the years created a curated list
of aliases and functions which gives me a universal Unix command line
language. It is mostly based on one letter abbreviations, e.g. 'v' for
vi(1), 'u' for uptime(1), 'c' for cat(1), 'g' for grep(1), etc. The gold
standard for me was always the venerable ed(1) and its clever ways of
expressing thoughts and ideas.

For modern Kubernetes ecosystem I am using abbreviated simple three letter
tokens. Instead of typing 'kubectl get pod' or 'kubectl describe pod', I am
using get, des, log, del, exe, img etc. omitting kubectl keyword entirely.
This model is much more consistent and faster to type than the default one.

This general attraction towards simplicity and minimalism in pure text
interfaces always fascinated me. My interest in the occult alphabets and
ancient philosophy only strengthens my view that wise men since time
immemorial have always occupied their minds with studying letters and
numbers. By its different combinations and permutations it was believed all
forces of nature could be understood and changed. The classic Shem
HaMephorash -- 72 divine names consisting of three letters is a good
example of such an ancient text interface, embodying profound ideas and
concepts.

Programming in general and shell interface in particular are just another
interpretation of those ancient ideas that symbolic letters and numbers are
the key to understand the universe.

To me command line text interface will always be the most elegant way to
communicate with machines.

--Andy