You are totally missing my point
Maybe your definition of a GUI is different than what I know to be a GUI.

William 'Doug' Carroll


-----Original Message-----
From: The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf 
Of Mark Post
Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2010 6:33 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: The old VM/ESA CMS GUI - Does it still live?

>>> On 11/24/2010 at 04:50 PM, William D Carroll 
>>> <[email protected]>
wrote: 
> My Original Comment on this whole thing was the a 3270 Emulator really is not 
> a GUI.  It is a text based implementation on a GUI desktop,  that does not 
> make it a GUI, your still typing commands.

Of course it is, when you use it to execute commands such as rdrlist, filelist, 
xedit, cut and paste, and any number of other tasks.  Having a GUI doesn't mean 
you don't type or don't think, it just means you type less, and perhaps 
different things.  My point is, people are conflating using GUIs with 
incompetence, and the two are orthogonal.  They bash other people that use 
their favorite GUI, but would never be willing to give up their own.

My company provides a tool called YaST.  It can run as a GUI, or an ncurses 
application.  Or, the sysadmin can do everything from the command line.  YaST 
_can_ make Linux sysadmins' lives easier, but if used exclusively, will 
actually make them less productive.  (Think of adding a couple hundred user 
accounts to multiple systems.  Point and click?  No way.)  Alternatively, 
exclusively _not_ using a GUI can also make you less productive.

GUIs are good for reducing the amount of time and skill needed for repetitive 
tasks.  (They're also good for automating well-defined tasks that involve a lot 
of "moving parts" that a human can overlook.)  They're not a replacement for a 
sysadmin's need to understand their OS, and how to accomplish things outside of 
it.  Blasting "people who use GUIs" for being incompetent instead of blasting 
incompetent (or sorely undertrained) people who just happen to be using a GUI 
misses the root cause.


Mark Post
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