easy question... no

 

I doubt it. GUI has made our computing lives infinitely easier. Sure there are still some things where command-lines would be better suited but overall I think GUI is a good thing. It may have a bit of an overhead but with graphics acceleration available on virtually all modern GPUs it's no big deal.

 

plus it brought A LOT of people to computing. if we still had to use command lines for EVERYTHING computing would be a lot less mainstream. plus what about videos and colors? and pron?

 

GUI ofcourse,..althought progamming it can be a pain in the back sometimes,...thats why i prefer programming MS DOS console apps

Yours,
-Elly

 

As much as I love doing stuff in the commandline, the GIMP interface has really sped up the use of personal and work computers.

 

a GUI is useful and convinent but could be a little messy without the command line

 

we'd still be stuck using BBS's, there'd be less push on pc games since the pc would be less widely used, and basically ALL technology as we know it would be held back since almost all technology is spawned from the mainstream use of computers. We'd be in the stone age, it would simply suck.

 

Programming a GUI really is a pain in the butt. I remember from my Java course Trying to write a GUI app. I can't remember any of the Java GUI stuff anymore. I just use it for writing the occasional console app. The last thing I wrote in Java was a batch filename swapper for use with all the MOD files I've been downloading from Aminet. As for graphics, I'm only doing fullscreen stuff, and that's with C++ under good ol' DOS.

 

Computers without one or the other would be a nightmare.

roxor: Simple GUI programming isn't too bad if you use the right tools. For example, using Glade on X11, you can build GTK+ GUIs in minutes using point and click, then generate C or C++ code (other languages too with plugins). You can also use libglade to load an XML file at runtime describing the GUI layout.

This gets rid of the easy job, leaving you to write the callbacks, custom widgets/controls, and whatever else.

Also, Graphics programming using C++ with SDL on Windows, OS X, FreeBSD, or Linux is just as easy as with DOS, only you get hardware acceleration, cross-platform compatibility, and a flat memory model. Your choice though.

 

I've never done any programming under Windows, except for my Java course.

 

No point in being firmly rooted in the past, roxor.

 

I've never done any programming under Windows, except for my Java course.

If you can, give Linux programming a try. In particular, I'd use Gentoo for development, since you're software will always be up to date and the development headers and libraries are always installed whenever you install something.

Something I've always hated about most Linux distributions is how they create separate software by into different packages for runtime and development.

 

There was a point in time (as my Science/Math teacher said) that just to draw a JPEG image took all day long; you had to put in the coordinates of all the lines and such. with the simple GUI of paint, the time it takes to draw a picture has been reduced dramatically.

 

Well let's think running games.
With MS-Dos, to run a game, first of all you have to type "cd games\Crusader"
Then "crusader"
With a Windows based machine, you can quicly navigate menus with the mouse.
Of course the knock on effect is that our collective typing spped is likely lower.

 

Of course DOS is a bad example of CLI. In a decent CLI OS, you would have the game's binary already on the path.

 

Not everyone is good at typing either. Plus I always make mistakes. I prefer a mouse with a GUI. Plus it looks cool.

 

>>Plus it looks cool.

That's debateable.

Well, it seems that nearly everyone here is in favour of the GUI, even if it is a pain to program. Maybe at some point in the future I'll have to try writing my own one from scratch.... In the meantime, I'll stick to fullscreen DOS stuff.

 

skinnable dos boxes ppl?? *cough*Winblinds*cough*

 

What's with all this skin madness, anyway?