[ge-talk] Vision for a usable commandline

[Ari Haviv]

We see all these UI's built on top on unix, including the unix commandline.
Even mac is now built on unix. I am always surprised why they would be proud
of such a unuser friendly system of sed, awk and ls. Haiku also uses the
unix interface but there is no why reason why we must. Apple on the other
hand is trying hard to be a real Unix and is even paying for official
certification. This leads to an opportunity in a world of linux, BSD and
mac.

My vision is for an OS based on file versioning, objects and index database
(including indexing the files). Everything is an object, including the
folders and the trash and desktops are special objects. All reached from the
commandline. The CLI would have a consistent and intuitive structure. it
shouldn't wipe out your files if you make a mistake. It should be easy for
my mom to use.

But my mom is probably not like your mom. :) She loves VMS, which she no
longer uses...she also likes SQL. I'm also thinking of my brother who is
studying for a MCSE. Sysadmins also want a modern usable CLI

Haiku has great scripting capabilities but most people don't know any
scripting language. Those who do, learned javascript first because they
copied from other websites and picked up the language piece by piece. Since
it was default scripting in browsers, there were plenty of examples
available. It is English based so while you still had to learn the syntax,
you have still something to hold on to.

That is why Haiku needs a default scripting language. You can use any you
want but people will be able to learn how to script applications through
examples...as long as it doesn't look like ASM or unix. I know that syllable
uses orca/rebol as their default. And the new commandline would have a
similar, consistent syntax.
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