[LINK] literacy (not computer literacy) and GUIs

[Danny Yee]

> ++ Have a look at Find Files in windows, it is a graphical interface which
> allows you to find all files greater than 1 MB, that have been modified (not
> sure about the converse situation but can't be hard to implement) and print
> their names and sizes...  And you don't have to know a single command to be
> able to do it...
 
Yes you do, you need to be able to use the "Find Files" command!

I've just looked at that, and it seems there are now options to search
on size and date and a few other things.  But that's still considerably
less powerful than the Unix "find" -- you can't do boolean logic,
for example.  And you have no access to the underlying "elements"
of the language, so you can't connect that tool to others easily.
(The Windows "Find Files" is effectively a tiny language, just a very
limited one.  It's also *different* to all the other tiny languages
in Windows, where one has to learn scores of mini-languages instead
of bigger but more general ones.)

But it's a matter of preference, I guess.  I agree there are some
things GUIs are usually better for, but there are also some things
language works much better for.

Danny.
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