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Microsoft causes learned helplessness
(lemmy.sdf.org)
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this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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It's definitely not human nature and is, instead, an improbably well coordinated conspiracy by a gigantic corporation known for being full of internal conflict over a span of decades to engineer helplessness in users. Whereas we all know that users are normally such resilient, inquisitive souls, more than willing to engage with a piece of technology in order to understand it. Or they were, until Microsoft attacked. Alas, if only it were not for the great evil empire, all would be well. At least this very real conspiracy serves the additional purpose of flattering the community's vanities and affirming its values as both morally correct and intellectually superior. So we got that going for us, which is nice.
I do find the idea that "the GUI is a Microsoft conspiracy to use their market share to make people too dumb to use computers" instead of "the GUI is why they have their market share" kind of amusing, though.
I absolutely see the value of explicitly dictating what you want with clear, precise text commands. I love using short simple scripts to get shit done for myself. But I have absolutely no interest in using the command line to navigate directories and files. It's perfectly fine that it's an option, but as the only option it's kind of shit.
Also, if we're gonna be talking about which CLI is easier to learn and use?
I wonder if its Linux, which has different programs for each flavor (apt get vs pacman vs yum) and whose command-set is from the 1990s where you had to use as little code as possible because of space/cpu limitations so the names for what each command does are not very descriptive...
Or is is Microsofts Powershell which has an extensive get-help command which provides a deep-dive on each and every command there is on top of all the commands being human readable in a verb-noun format that can be read by a layman and generally understood what the command is doing simply by its name. Oh and get-command so if you're not sure what command you need, you can search for it by keyword.
Man pages can be pretty useless if you don't already know which command you need. In Linux you don't have as many options of learning what the command you need is, because they're not human readable. Instead you have to search online and hope someone can clue you in to the right command/set of commands.
Linux is the better OS, but Microsoft made the right choice by making Powershell commands human readable and straight forward. If Linux was being started from scratch, this is something I would put in the pipeline: "Human readable commands in a verb-noun structure."
The problem with powershell for me is everything needs to be typed in a dreaded Pascal + Kebab case which makes typing quite slower than linux's all-lowercase commands. Easeir to learn, perhaps, but not easier to use.
I get that, but Windows/Powershell isn't case-sensitive, so you can type it all lowercase if you want (I do).
Linux on the other hand is case sensitive despite most GNU tools defaulting to all lower case. There's definitely a bunch of case-sensitive switches in Linux CLI applications.
There has been optional case-insensitive file system support in Linux for a few years now, though.
It’s case sensitive? Oh wow, that does make things a lot easier. I still hate hyphens
I prefer using the CLI for navigating file systems. I can pipe the output through other commands, search quickly, and move anywhere in the system with ease