While this is not a serious post I’m going to take it seriously, so here are some of the reasons:
Nobody can easily remember the precise file name and if you don’t get the first letters right you’re screwed(did I mention capital letters matter?)
Wtf is --vo=tct? No sane person is remembering all of that (same goes for the rest 10000 parameters and options)
Again, waaayyy too many parameters, who remembers their playlist name? There is no autocomplete here, you’re on your sad own in your sad little room with your sad little feelings, because there’s no one there to tell you the song’s precise name, because computers are assholes and don’t hate you.
So why GUIs? Because they make computers seem like friendly fellas which actually care about you and give you options, tell you the available functions(without deciphering a 50 pages manual if done well)
If you take it seriously, then at least your complaints should be reasonable, not meme-worthy.
Autocomplete is a standard feature in CLI nowadays, so no need to remember everything.
And parameters usually have names chosen to make the most sense and to be memorable (e.g. vo = video output).
Serious person here.
Can autocomplete fill in a YouTube URL or Spotify playlist name? Can I browse the list of what’s available and filter, drill down, poke around according to my whimsy?
Or if I’m accessing a local file, how do I find that one video of my cat named VID-004326.MP4?
Can I autocomplete the parameters themselves, which are betimes lengthy and unwieldy to type out?
Even if it’s possible, and I’ve mastered every arcane parameter necessary to do it, is it really faster / more convenient than doing it through a GUI?
Maybe there are good answers to the above questions—I don’t know and would love to find out—but they and many more like them are surely reasonable and far from meme-worthy, or else I’m missing something huge.
In which situation would you need an autocomplete for YT URL? Online-only services designed for a web browser are crappy examples.
But anyway, yes, Spotify clients written for CLI do provide autocomplete and filters. I never tried YT, so I don’t know.
Or if I’m accessing a local file, how do I find that one video of my cat named VID-004326.MP4?
And how do you do that using GUI? The exact same way, looking blindly and playing random videos (or name the file properly in the first place).
Can I autocomplete the parameters themselves, which are betimes lengthy and unwieldy to type out?
Obviously, yes, that’s pretty much the entire point.
Even if it’s possible, and I’ve mastered every arcane parameter necessary to do it, is it really faster / more convenient than doing it through a GUI?
That mostly depends on the user, but often: yes, it is. Otherwise we’d all have moved on from CLI ages ago.
Please don’t take this as a personal attack, but assuming CLI is some unwieldy, outdated idea requiring mysterious arcane knowledge to use effectively only shows ignorance.
It also hurts new users, because it discourages them from trying it for bad reasons.
