Terminal Envy

Browsing some OS X related blogs (most prominently Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders – a great blog and must read for anyone into OS X and GTD) there seems to be a certain perception of powerusers (who are not professional programmers or sysadmins) that there is some sort of hidden enjoyment beneath the cosy Aqua interface OS X provides, which is accessible only to some priviliged species of hackers who live inside this magical thing called Terminal, who rarely – if ever – touch the mouse or have to look at the screen…

My take on this: the Terminal really shines when dealing with plain text in combination with typewriting skills. For other non trivial usecases / workflows / tasks it actually would be interesting to benchmark the two approaches (alpha geek vs. productivity freak), but in most cases its probably a wash. Anyway, using the terminal is also a great way of taking a little break from the oversaturated beauty of Aqua. Learn how to use it! but no need for Terminal Envy ;)