Command Line Interfaces - A Relic of the Past?

Command Line Interfaces (CLI) have existed since the very first computer operating systems were developed. Although Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) are a later innovation, the GUI has also been around for quite a long time.

Precursors to modern GUIs have existed since the 1960's, but the introduction of the first mainstream GUI-based operating systems (Apple Macintosh in 1984, Commodore Amiga and Microsoft Windows in 1985) has gradually transformed computing into a fully "point and click" experience.

In the PC world, GUI based computing did not catch on quite as fast. Although the first version of Microsoft Windows was released in 1985, Windows never really gained much popularity until version 3.x was released in the early 1990's. Even then, the majority of software continued to be developed for DOS; a command line based operating system. This meant that most people learning how to use PCs still had to learn how to use DOS to some degree.

The release of Windows 95 saw the beginning of the end for PCs running DOS as a primary OS. Windows NT/2000 marked the complete removal of DOS as an underlying OS, but these versions of Windows were mainly used in business-class PCs only. It was not until Windows XP, released in 2001, when DOS underpinnings were completely removed from general purpose home PCs.

According to current estimates, the usage share of computer operating systems is approximately 90% Windows, 5% Mac OS, 2% Linux, and the remaining 3% other OSes.

So with 95% of computers running either Windows or Mac, it's not surprising that point and click is essentially the only way that the vast majority of computer users today know how to operate a computer. The keyboard is merely relegated to text entry, and for the most part, this method works.

Does this mean CLIs are obsolete?

Hardly -- despite the fact that we can now probably accomplish most tasks solely through a point and click GUI system, the reality is CLIs and GUIs don't compete, but rather complement each other, and both continue to evolve. There are still a lot of things that can only be accomplished (or accomplished much more efficiently) via a command line.

This is why CLIs still exist in contemporary OSes. A DOS command shell still exists in Windows XP & Vista. Even Macs running Mac OS X now have a Unix-like command line terminal (whereas the classic Macintosh operating system did not have any CLI at all).

As a extension to the posts which I will be classifying as "TechTips", some will also focus on using the command line, so this post is to just establish the fact that CLIs are a very powerful tool, and still very relevant in today's world of point and click GUIs. Hopefully some of the examples that I will be demonstrating here in the future will illustrate this fact clearly.