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You don't have to sell me on using the shell at all and I have seen one-liner databases (which are really only fun once you have a pretty good level of mastery)

I find that IDEs make everything so needlessly complex and inflexible - I don't want 2000 little icons in 200 drawers managed by 54 XML files that I will eventually be expected to edit.

The observation is that they are winning anyway. In fact, people even think they are easier, AND they think their IDE does things that can't even be done otherwise! These people are smart enough to develop software, yet they are opting for what we think are dumb tools. Either we are just wrong, or there is just a misunderstanding about the relative easiness of IDEs.

I think that commercial platforms and products aimed at consumers (including developers) tend to have people paying careful attention to marketing and experience, to add a layer of glitz and wow and accessibility. It isn't that it could not be done but no one is bothering, once you know the efficient way then there is no point dressing it up.

I also think we have built up a culture which is somewhat punitive to newbies. Too many people treat programming and composition of command line tools as some kind of dick swinging competition rather than the inherently simplest and most straightforward way of doing things, which is SUPPOSED TO make your life easier and let you do things you couldn't otherwise do.



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