Shoddy sarcasm? Stands to reason.
After all, a large part of the readership and perhaps even most el-reg hacks are two-finger typing windows users. How I know this? Most people are, even nowadays, and seeing the mockery, well.... Not that hard to put two and fingers together and recall that's how we got around back when we weren't enlightened yet.
I recall doing a CAD practical back in university. Group of four, one of them had had *a lot* of experience with the program already. He took the keyboard, the other guy had the mouse. I had the other keyboard, and the fourth had the associated mouse. We two spent most time looking over the first guy's shoulder, picking up his commands, highlighted by the occasional point and click. I think we four finished that practical in maybe a quarter of the time.
If I hadn't had a unix (or even ghod forbid, 4dos) background already, that experience would've converted me. The ability to say right away "I want *this*" instead of spending time poring over menus to find just the right button is quite useful. The ability to ``can'' sequences for later re-use, even moreso.
Sure, some GUIs come with "macro" capabilities that let you record and later replay sequences of clicks, yet somehow that hasn't caught on as much. The main GUI vendor being what it is, for a good entire-platform solution you need to go third party (what, surprised? why?) and some reasonable ones do exist. But using any such thing usually boils down to recording a sequence, then to make sure it'll work in slightly different circumstances, too, and oh remove most of the crud that inevitably accumulates, you end up bringing up the textfile with the script and editing that anyway. In IT parlance, ``GUIs just don't scale''. Since automation is the most important thing we IT people can do to add value, that's somewhat important, I'd say.
That, next to my amazing selftaught ability to touch type a meagre 65wpm (I know a one-handed guy who manages 85, a good secretary will manage 200+), indubitably makes me an insufferably arrogant evangelist fanboi elitist in the eyes of this el reg hack, deserving all the sarcasm he can manage to leverage.
Oh well, bring it on I say. But do try harder, please. This was just... poorly done, and bland.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
