Progaramming: how to add a gui front end to a CL command?

[Michael T. Richter]

On Sun, 2007-05-08 at 17:41 -0700, Matthew Voss wrote:

> But a front-end to a command line command would make peoples life
> easier wouldn't it?


It depends very much on the command, actually.  There are some things
(far fewer than most believe!) that are easier and better done on the
command line.  (This is, incidentally, why Bruce chose "find" -- he
deliberately picked a utility that he thought would be of questionable
use when GUIed and beat the straw stuffing out of it.)  For most things,
however, and for most people, GUIfied versions of commands would be
better than the command line.  This is, after all, why GUIs were
invented in the first place.

But....

The person who writes the GUI wrapper for a CL utility will rarely
receive the benefit of it because, simply, to wrap a non-trivial utility
in a GUI would require learning the utility so well that the GUI would
be of little use to the person who made it.  So if you're only
considering yourself when writing utilities (and most software writers
do only think of themselves), there's little benefit to "wasting time"
on making GUIs.

-- 
Michael T. Richter <ttmrichter at gmail.com> (GoogleTalk:
ttmrichter at gmail.com)
Experts in advanced countries underestimate by a factor of two to four
the ability of people in underdeveloped countries to do anything
technical. (Charles P Issawi)
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