Before there were graphical user interfaces, I logged many a keystroke on flickering green screens. There was no mouse, no Google, just your fingers going clickety-clackety and the bookcase full of system manuals behind you just in case your memory failed.
After the GUI took over, I always had an open command prompt window, DOS nostalgia.
When Linux came around, I dedicated a machine to it, and it took over command line duties.
Today, Debian runs in a virtual machine on a second monitor and does the heavy lifting.
The amount of GNU/Linux commands, and the myriad of options each one has, combined with the infinite possibilities of streams, pipes and redirects, is mind boggling. There’s not much you can’t do on a blinking cursor command line.
As we progress towards the connected home, or as they call it now the “Internet of Things”, I can envision the day when I have a script running on a cron job, that kicks off the coffee machine, that turns on the toaster to heat my bagel, that emails me on job completion to my tablet, which wakes me with a ring tone that says “Good morning Bert, your coffee is ready”.
Those precious few minutes I save, I can use to surf the web for adorable cat pictures ;)
Meet George Jetson
His boy, Elroy
Daughter Judy
Jane, his wife