Do people still write and compile programs from the command line, instead of an IDE? Why or why not?
22nd January 2012
My answer to Do people still write and compile programs from the command line, instead of an IDE? Why or why not? on Quora
Being an expert with command line tools gives you super powers.
The beauty of command line interfaces is that anything you can do, you can automate. GUI tools have to go out of their way to enable task automation, and chances are it will be very difficult to automate anything that the tool author did not anticipate.
Programmers should look to automate anything that they do more than twice.
More recent articles
- Changes in the system prompt between Claude Opus 4.6 and 4.7 - 18th April 2026
- Join us at PyCon US 2026 in Long Beach - we have new AI and security tracks this year - 17th April 2026
- Qwen3.6-35B-A3B on my laptop drew me a better pelican than Claude Opus 4.7 - 16th April 2026