OT: Stupid Bloody Android

[dennis]

ITYM which normal people were using computers?

And for bonus points which normal people would be using computers now if they only had command lines?

[tim...]

If you aren't a Unix geek how do you find this "man" command in the first place? No OS of my experience uses it (and I have used more than a dozen in my career)

tim

[tim...]

and often graduates who will have experienced Unix as a case study during their course

but my time at Uni pre-dated that "standard"

but only if I know all the geeky commands

and I don't

tim

[tim...]

in what way does a sys admin qualify as a "normal" person?

They are in the geek class.

tim

[Max Demian]

I've just tried Solid Explorer Classic and I couldn't get on with the user interface at all: complicated to select multiple objects, have to confirm for a move, 'lost' the ability to enter a folder by tapping on it. And it removed the ES File Explorer icon from the screen. Cheeky!

I've gone back to ES Explorer now as it isn't too bad. And it has its own 'viewers/editors' for most file types. The Media Player has decided to stop insisting on portrait mode too for some reason.

[tim...]

I'm not arguing against command lines, in principle.

I am arguing against the "value" of dropping into a Unix/Linux command line on an Android machine.

When the only means of operating a computer was via a command line everybody was "taught" those commands (or had access to copious manuals that explained them).

but when championing the use of a command line instead of an installed GUI, people are making the assumption that "everybody" already has knowledge of how to use that specific command line.

My point is that that assumption is completely false, and that only a tiny minority of users actually have such knowledge.

tim

[tim...]

but I didn't make the choice based upon whether they were teaching Unix, and even if I did how could anyone possibly know that it would eventually "take over" the world?

There were loads of things that academia thought were the bees-knees 40 years ago (Lisp [1] for example) that were going to take over the world, but that landed flat on their face in the real world

Unix could easily have been one of them.

tim

[1] I actually remember turning down a job because they used Lisp and it was obvious to me that it was a dead end language, experience of which wouldn't enhance my career.

[The Natural Philosopher]

You have to start somewhere.

how is one supposed to know that moving that thing called a 'mouse' and clicking its buttons is supposed to do something?

How is one supposed to know what 'insert sim card' means, or what that stupid paper clip like device is used for, when its not mentioned in the instruction manual?

How is one supposed to know which pedal operates the brakes?

[Tim Streater]

Very often the man page for a command is not installed, or assumes other knowledge, or is out of date.

[tim...]

but when you all move to something new, the employer provides training

throughout my career all of my prospective employers "expected" people to be up to speed with Unix on the day that they arrived (only the set that used Unix, of course)

None expected to need to offer any form of training

and as I have already said, with Unix you can't just wing it (well I never could, anyway).

Um, what is that stupid paper clip like device is used for?

tim

[The Natural Philosopher]

Neither do I, but I manage.

especially with the internet.

e.g. google 'I want to use a unix shell to delete all files in a given directory older than a week'

gets me straight to

find /path -name "*" -mtime +8 -exec rm -f {} \;

which is complete gobbledeygook, but works.

I challenge you to do that on a GUI based system in less than a minute

Even windows needs a batch file

@echo off setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion call :DateToJDN %date% oldDate= -%1 for /F "skip=5 tokens=1-4*" %%a in ('dir /A:-D /O:D') do ( call :DateToJDN %%a fileDate= if !fileDate! lss %oldDate% ( del "%%e" ) else ( goto :EOF ) ) goto :EOF

:DateToJDN Date JDN= [+-days] for /F "tokens=1-3 delims=/" %%x in ("%1") do set /A mm=10%%x %% 100, dd=10%%y %% 100, yy=%%z if %mm% lss 3 set /A mm+=12, yy-=1 set /A a=yy/100, b=a/4, c=2-a+b, e=36525*(yy+4716)/100, f=306*(mm+1)/10, %2=C+DD+E+F-1524%3 exit /B

I mean ....which is more complex? Windows is !

Time and again I have been impressed at how fast data sentry systems are, that do not use graphics or a mouse, with the operator tabbing through the fields using nothing more than typists skills on a keyboard before hitting return to update the data.

I hate having to continually switch from, typing to using a mouse..it wastes huge amounts of time.

GUIS are essential for CAD, but they are not essential for so much that would be done better if they didn't exist.

Your windows/Mac interface is only 'easy' because you know it well enough to do whatever it is you want to do, reasonably well.

And that is the same for everyone. All you need to know is not even how to do what you want to do, it is enough to know who to ask, even if its only Google.

i.e googling "insert sim card in phone you tube"

takes you to here

which three pictures in the instruction manual would have been able to illustrate.

All you have managed to say in reality is 'I am thick and lazy and I just about managed to get to a point where I can drive the technology I was sold to do the few things I understand how to do'.

I am not claiming much moral highground though.

I am intelligent and hardworking and I just about managed to get to a point where I can drive the technology I bought to do the many things I wanted it to do.

[The Natural Philosopher]

*shrug*

If you want to solve a certain class of problems, I suggest you learn.

You are so typical of the snowflake generation 'I want my car to start' 'well get out a spanner and a multimeter and work out why it isn't then' 'but I dont expect to do that, why isnt there a knob on the dashboard that simply says 'start my car'?' 'well there is, but apparently either you haven't found it, or it isn't working.

Of course battery voltage meters were discontinued years ago on the grounds that they cost money and confused people.

Basically tim, if you want dumbed down technology because you are dumb, don't blame the geeks if you were sold it on the basis that it was smart innovative and the coming thing, rather than fashionable shit you bought because everyone else had one.

You see one COULD write a GUI application that e.g. had all the boxes to fill in so that you could for example do something subtle and powerful like deleting all picture files older than a week... and that would take a competent programmer a week, and a bunch or testers about a month to make sure was idiot proof and ideally a technical documentation writer or a you tube video maker another month to explain how to use....

Or you could simply say 'use the command line'

Your real problem is that you are a dork, who has been sold crappy technology on the basis that owning it will make you look and feel smart, because it 'does stuff' and your very limited knowledge of how to operate it makes you look as if you actually understand it.

Sadly the reality is that it is just a bunch of crappy tech, sold on the basis of fashion, poorly designed, almost completely undocumented, totally irreparable if it goes wrong and almost worthless 5 years after its been bought, whose real purpose is to part you from your money without its perpetrators being put in gaol. And continue to part you from your money by being the vehicle by which you will get sold even more crap in terms of products and services.

That it happens to run - in the case of android - on a rather good operating system that might actually assist you in rendering it slightly less shit than it actually is, is a bonus if you can be bothered to actually learn how to use it.

But patently you can't (be bothered).

[Andy Burns]

No it doesn't ...

forfiles /P path /D -7 /C "cmd /c del @file"

[The Natural Philosopher]

well it still has to use the 'windows command line'

[AnthonyL]

Total Commander has the ability to have the a screen in one window, swipe left and go to another screen/folder. Move, copy or sync files from one window/folder to the other.

[Chris Green]

OK, get the syasadmin (whoever that may be) to alias 'help' to 'man

-k' and you should be off into command-line land.....

[Huge]

[43 lines snipped]

Someone tells you, f****it.

No point in waving a willy when it's so small.

[The Natural Philosopher]

So you have never used unix, linux, BSD unix or mac OSX?

I wonder what these dozen oses were?

CP/M, VMS, DOS, OS/2...

[tim...]

I didn't say that I had never used them

I said that I had never had any training in them

and that I bumbled along badly until I found a job that didn't use them

you seem to have missed that my career spans the era when there were still half a dozen manufactures of main frame equipment in the market

and I just happened to work on a project where it was my job to benchmark some new software on all of these systems - so I got some exposure to all of them for a few days at a time (don't ask me the individual OS's names, I can remember)

tim

[Tim Streater]

Why would one need training on any of these?