But I’m not talking about programming languages, I’m talking about CLI programs, or system commands.
And I’m not telling a GUI would be better, or more efficient, I’m just saying that it can be done (something you are saying too about programming languages).
That’s the point: a GUI can replace a CLI. Is it better? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. Is it possible? Absolutely.
I would assert that basically every shell I’m aware of is also a programming/scripting langauge, able to handle things like loops and branches. This is possible to do in a GUI but it’s kind of telling no one has achieved this in a desktop environment to any significant degree, including in the Linux space.
“Iterate over all of the files in this folder, if it’s a video file of any format, create a folder with the same name as the video file in ~/Videos and move the file there.” I’m unaware of an OS desktop environment that can do even that level of automation with default GUI tools. It’s like 5 lines of Bash including “done;” at the end. You can probably do it in PowerShell, but I bet Windows power users would rather use AutoHotKey for this.
You really can’t imagine doing that with a GUI?
Here you have something to give you an idea (sorry it’s in Spanish, but I guess you can get an idea of how it may work):
Here I’m selecting a specific type of files (PDFs, but I can select several different types, as I’m organising by file type), after which I did a right click, and selected a contextual action that shows a popup to do a following action. In this case it’s renaming, but it could easily be a “Move to…” that could include a check option of “Create a folder for each file”.
I mean, it was actually pretty fast too. It’s not that difficult.
It wouldn’t make sense to add clutter to a GUI that benefits a tiny fraction of users a tiny fraction of the time while making the experience worse for everyone else.
I can imagine making a GUI that does it. But most aren’t able to. “That could include a check option of…” yeah it doesn’t though, is my point. GUIs are for doing things manually.
But I’m not talking about programming languages, I’m talking about CLI programs, or system commands.
And I’m not telling a GUI would be better, or more efficient, I’m just saying that it can be done (something you are saying too about programming languages).
That’s the point: a GUI can replace a CLI. Is it better? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. Is it possible? Absolutely.
I would assert that basically every shell I’m aware of is also a programming/scripting langauge, able to handle things like loops and branches. This is possible to do in a GUI but it’s kind of telling no one has achieved this in a desktop environment to any significant degree, including in the Linux space.
“Iterate over all of the files in this folder, if it’s a video file of any format, create a folder with the same name as the video file in ~/Videos and move the file there.” I’m unaware of an OS desktop environment that can do even that level of automation with default GUI tools. It’s like 5 lines of Bash including “done;” at the end. You can probably do it in PowerShell, but I bet Windows power users would rather use AutoHotKey for this.
You really can’t imagine doing that with a GUI? Here you have something to give you an idea (sorry it’s in Spanish, but I guess you can get an idea of how it may work):
Here I’m selecting a specific type of files (PDFs, but I can select several different types, as I’m organising by file type), after which I did a right click, and selected a contextual action that shows a popup to do a following action. In this case it’s renaming, but it could easily be a “Move to…” that could include a check option of “Create a folder for each file”. I mean, it was actually pretty fast too. It’s not that difficult.
It wouldn’t make sense to add clutter to a GUI that benefits a tiny fraction of users a tiny fraction of the time while making the experience worse for everyone else.
I can imagine making a GUI that does it. But most aren’t able to. “That could include a check option of…” yeah it doesn’t though, is my point. GUIs are for doing things manually.