I don't like the reasoning in the author's argument at all. He is begging the question: it is "bullshittery because it is bullshit." By assuming the command line as not an intellectually rich environment, he creates an intellectually impoverished and frustrating experience for his students.
The command line is far from that. It is an incredibly standardized environment, elegant compared with "black box" gui-driven cluttered all-in-one solutions (looking at you Stata) for programming or doing data science. It encourages code that "does one thing well" and which produces input/output streams in an unencumbered, plain text format.
These ideas may not be interesting for the development of new search algorithms, but they are incredibly interesting for the developing of a new search engine, for example, or a new word processor (as interfaces between human and machine). Using the command line well develops into the daily discipline of economy, simplicity, and common sense. If command line is bullshit, what does he think is not?
The command line is far from that. It is an incredibly standardized environment, elegant compared with "black box" gui-driven cluttered all-in-one solutions (looking at you Stata) for programming or doing data science. It encourages code that "does one thing well" and which produces input/output streams in an unencumbered, plain text format.
These ideas may not be interesting for the development of new search algorithms, but they are incredibly interesting for the developing of a new search engine, for example, or a new word processor (as interfaces between human and machine). Using the command line well develops into the daily discipline of economy, simplicity, and common sense. If command line is bullshit, what does he think is not?