My son wants me to teach him Python

[Neil Cerutti]

On 2013-06-14, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Jun 2013 20:33:40 -0700, Rick Johnson wrote:
>
>> On Thursday, June 13, 2013 3:18:57 PM UTC-5, Joshua Landau wrote:
>> 
>>> [...]
>>> GUI is boring. I don't give a damn about that. If I had it my way, I'd
>>> never write any interfaces again (although designing them is fine).
>>> Console interaction is faster to do and it lets me do the stuff I
>>> *want* to do quicker.
>> 
>> And are you willing to provide *proof* that the console is faster? Or is
>> this merely just your "opinion"? I would be ready and willing to compete
>> in a "Pepsi challenge" to disprove your claim if needed.  For instance,
>> if i want to open a text file on my machine, i merely navigate to the
>> file via my file browser interface, using clicks along the way, and then
>> the final double click will open the text file using it's default
>> program. Are you telling me you can type the address faster (much less
>> remember the full path) than i can point and click? 
>
> If you can remember the full path in order to point and click,
> then I'm sure Joshua can remember the full path in order to
> type.

My favorite current challenge for an IDE designer is
concatenating text files. This is a one-liner, even with cmd.exe,
but I don't even know how to do it in Explorer. I'd have to use X
number of text editing sessions.

> But in any case, there are certainly strengths and weaknesses
> of both GUIs and text interfaces, and one should design
> programs around whichever is best for the needs of the program
> and the user.

The side issue of keyboard shortcuts in GUI interface have
built-in stengths and weaknesses. I was going to write something
about them earlier, but I got bogged down when I thought of the
issue of accessibilty, which overtakes any such discussion.

-- 
Neil Cerutti