The Strange Longevity of the Command Line

The command line should probably have disappeared by now. It comes from an era when computer displays showed little more than text and users were expected to type instructions rather than point at icons. Since then we have had graphical desktops, touchscreens, voice assistants, mobile apps, web applications, and several decades of attempts to make computers easier to use. Yet open a terminal on Linux or macOS, connect to a server, work with development tools, or administer a network device, and there it is: a prompt waiting for someone to type a command. That survival is not just inertia. The command line has lasted because it remains unusually good at certain kinds of work. Graphical interfaces made computers accessible to far more people and are better for many tasks, but they never made the older interface useless. In some areas of computing, the command line may be more important now than it was when desktop computers first began replacing terminals. Before Pointing and Clicking…