Comment Re:Command line is more error-prone (Score 1) 606
It's easier to shoot yourself in the foot with the command line.
... Just offering a counter-argument for the sake of discussion.
Well, the UNIX camp would just point out this is an argument for using crusty typing instead of click-n-drag pictures. The appropos quote from wikipedia is:
"Unix was not designed to stop its users from doing stupid things, as that would also stop them from doing clever things." – Doug Gwyn
The original poster has more than two different problems conflated and it reads like 'I took a bad class and this is why.'
The study of computer training, as a part of the larger pedology, frequently brings up the user vs programmer paradigm. But the whole framing is captive and derogatory. It's parishioner verses priests and proletariat verses bourgeois. Some people use some tools differently. This is not culture, it is just label-ism, that first step on the road to racism, at its finest. We should call that black sheep what it is and move away from it.
One of the problems the article points out, graphics verses typing, nothing new to even to slashdot. It may be that he is encountering this for the first time but others have written better on it. I see whole books published by Sun Microsystems on Graphical User Interfaces(GUI) verses Command Line Interfaces(CLI) on my shelf without even standing up.
To teach people to program in the 21st century you have to be prepared to show them both graphical tools and the command line. But you do have to explain them and why and when to use them to new people. They each have their uses. Tower for the mac and good ol' git in the terminal for version control. Google docs or Microsoft Windows and RestructureText and LATEX. Sales and Marketing may claim training's purpose is to get free swag and charge an arseload for support. But that's the point of training: to explain stuff.
If you don't know enough to explain that, why are you trying? (nobody else? boss + deadline? free t-shirts? It's your "job?")
However, it looks like the preparation for the training class that the article is based on wasn't even up to a standard where such mechanisms could be addressed directly.
- They reported people failing to get a Linux laptop to use $RANDOM_BRAND projector. Noob trainer mistake #1 - prepare to present by practicing with what you'll actually use.
- The trainers presents follow-along training using stunt-configured terminals different from what the students saw. Noob trainer mistake #2 - eat the same dogfood your students do or you'll waste the student's time explaining and dealing with the differences.
If you are dealing with people who are starting out you will spend most your time on jargon and concepts. Diving into the command line would be fine, but you would be putting artificial constraints on your presentation. A good trainer needs to be aware of and explicitly mention that.
Adult education is a different form children's education. Usually the one that never gets the adequate funding. We expect different from and for adults. Kids are used to walls of new unrelated stuff. Adults usually are not or are good at ignoring it. You can convince a child that 'this is just how you do it' most the time where as an adult probably has some biases built in from previous experience.
That's the only good point I see in the article: people aren't blank slates. But one person's trivial obvious fact is another person's mind blowing revelation.