> [he] declares Excel superior because it can make graphs much more easily.
You should read more carefully. He claimed no such thing. His real claim was that users tend to react like that. And we programmers must be prepared for such backlash.
> The author does not seem to understand why command line tools still work the way they worked in the sixties
The author is saying the users don't understand. He knows about their goodness. The problem is to teach it.
> He mentions git, the version management system that uses the command line mostly, but forgets to mention that although git could surely have (and has) a GUI, it would disable you from doing many things.
> I often pipe git output to other tools, something you just cannot do with a GUI.
A nice GUI could, among other things, record what you just did and translate it into the command line equivalent. But more importantly, when you have a GUI, the command line no longer have to act as an interactive user interface. It can now be dedicated to what it does best: API.
Removing the command like would bring the apocalypse (as it mostly did on Windows), but merely adding a GUI can make things much better.
> Oh, and he uses nano for command line text editing. I suppose that also explains a thing or two when working with Vim or Emacs is so much better than any other text editor.
He knows about the Vim/Emacs holy flame wars, so he most likely used one or the other. But go teach either of them to the hapless student. The Emacs tutorial alone takes several dozens minutes to get through. Extremely useful, but quite steep. Nano on the other hand can be taught in seconds. So it is more likely the first text editor the students will see. If you want them to write Python code and you only have an hour before they leave, you have little choice.
You should read more carefully. He claimed no such thing. His real claim was that users tend to react like that. And we programmers must be prepared for such backlash.
> The author does not seem to understand why command line tools still work the way they worked in the sixties
The author is saying the users don't understand. He knows about their goodness. The problem is to teach it.
> He mentions git, the version management system that uses the command line mostly, but forgets to mention that although git could surely have (and has) a GUI, it would disable you from doing many things.
Not necessarily: http://tonsky.me/blog/reinventing-git-interface/
> I often pipe git output to other tools, something you just cannot do with a GUI.
A nice GUI could, among other things, record what you just did and translate it into the command line equivalent. But more importantly, when you have a GUI, the command line no longer have to act as an interactive user interface. It can now be dedicated to what it does best: API.
Removing the command like would bring the apocalypse (as it mostly did on Windows), but merely adding a GUI can make things much better.
> Oh, and he uses nano for command line text editing. I suppose that also explains a thing or two when working with Vim or Emacs is so much better than any other text editor.
He knows about the Vim/Emacs holy flame wars, so he most likely used one or the other. But go teach either of them to the hapless student. The Emacs tutorial alone takes several dozens minutes to get through. Extremely useful, but quite steep. Nano on the other hand can be taught in seconds. So it is more likely the first text editor the students will see. If you want them to write Python code and you only have an hour before they leave, you have little choice.