Barney Dalton wrote:
>
> can someone educate me about the wonders of a command line interface for
> debugging. I love emacs and use it for editing, and compiling perl, c++
> and java. The only thing I don't use it for is debugging c++, where I find
> the visual c++ interface easier and faster to use. What am I missing?
It is not necessarily that a command line interface is inherently
superior, but the converse (that GUI debuggers are inherently superior)
is certainly not true either. There are two reasons that I think it is
extremely important to maintain command line interfaces to useful
tools. First and foremost, as one whose wrists are deteriorating from
heavy computer use, I need to use the mouse as little as possible--GUI's
essentially require the use of the mouse (and, yes, the mouse is more
painful than typing). Second, GUI's rely on graphical displays. This
excludes users of non-graphical terminals from being able to use the
debugger. One of the wonderful things about emacs and the JDE is that
they allow more people to participate fully in their benefits regardless
(for the most part) of physical disabilities and computer hardware.
You also shouldn't assume that because you find a graphical debugger
more convenient that this will hold true for all people or for all
debugging tasks. I have found that both have advantages in different
applications.
In any case, I am quite satisfied with what I know of Paul's approach to
the integration thus far and am anxiously awaiting its arrival. I just
wanted to remind people that there is a group of people (albeit probably
small) that are alienated by the "everything has to be a GUI" mindset
and they don't really have much recourse to participate fully in a GUI
world.
--
Brian Stiles
