"DOS is ugly and interferes with user experience." -Bill Gates
Before the Personal Computer and GUI
The UNIVAC, a computer before the era of the PC.
Before the era of the Personal Computer, computers as powerful as a pocket calculator took up the size of a room, required multiple attendants, and constant service. Now, an average personal computer is 1000 times faster and is as small as a notebook, or binder.
"PCs before the commercialization of the Graphical User Interface were hard to use, required training, and didn't have many applications.'The only computers that existed at the time were giant mainframes, and typically users would interact with them using what was called 'batch processing.' A user would submit a program on a series of punch cards, the computer would run the program at some scheduled time, and then the results would be picked up hours or even days later. Even the idea of having users enter commands on a text-based terminal in real-time (called "time-sharing" in the jargon of the day) was considered radical back then." - ArsTechnica
A clip from the documentary History Channel Modern Marvels The PC, talking about CLI's.
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The people who owned a computer before the commercialization of the GUI had to memorize lines of code and only the computer "nerds" could operate them. Imagine a world in which computer had only had a black and green screen, that could only display letters. Imagine that opening a program required a long command, and that using a computer required memorizing a long lines of commands. Imagine not being able to play games or to change the font on a document. That was what life before the GUI was like.
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