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Comment by rrrazdan | Hacker News Reader

Many times you need to look beneath the veneer of abstractions that is the modern GUI, to work with speed and flexibility. However you don't want to strip away all the abstractions. That would yield the system very unwieldy. (example: Programming in C vs Programming in Assembly) The Unix command prompt is just the right amount of abstraction for me, and for many other users. What the project proposes is certainly novel, and this level of abstraction may work for some people.

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Exactly, I think if you are a hacker you will stick with the shell the way it is, because knowing how stuff works with "zero" abstractions is power.

Reminds me of this: http://i.imgur.com/jqIcv.jpg

Also I mean as a hacker, not as an entrepreneur.

I think my point is that we've all been so locked into these tools that we've become blind as to where their failing are. I wanted to start TermKit from a fresh slate and only slowly add bits of existing Unix to it, so I could make sure the resulting whole still made sense.

For me, as someone that does all his work in Windows and stays away from consoles as much as possible, this entire discussion is hilarious.

I think your project is cool, it certainly is a fresh take on the console, but the minority of people that like the unix console will be very resistant to anything graphical, and the majority of people that prefer graphical interfaces will just wonder why the hell you still need to do all of that typing. :-)

The fundamental problem with consoles is that it's impossible to explore the interface. You can only use it by knowing the possible commands beforehand.

Hmm.. Perhaps that's something you could explore with Termkit? With the added graphical output, is it possible to show hints for what I can/want to do, given what I've already typed? I dunno, just an idea.

The power is in knowing the shell. You can do things quickly and do exactly what you want if you know how to use it. No GUI can give you with the same speed and efficiency.

The learning curve is steep, I like your suggestion of 'exploring' the interface. I think this deserves more merit than making the shell glossy.

A shell is far from ‘zero’ abstractions.

Hence the quotes. Like someone else mentioned its the 'right' level of abstractions for most. Heck even the assembly isin't zero abstractions.

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