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Christopher Negus

"Linux Bible, 2008 Edition: Boot up to Ubuntu, Fedora, KNOPPIX, Debian, openSUSE, and 11 Other Distributions"

The
CLI programming environment can match the environment provided by GUIs feature for feature,
with the single exception of the graphical interface itself.
The inconvenience, if inconvenience it is, arises from the fact that the CLI programming environment
relies on separate tools. For example, assuming you are working in the X Window System,
you might be running one or more text editors, such as vi, pico, nano, joe, or emacs, each in its
own terminal window. You might use another terminal window for compiling your program, either
by invoking the compiler gcc (the GNU compiler collection) directly, or by using the make utility.
In still another window you might be running a debugger such as gdb (the GNU debugger). If you
are unfamiliar with the library you are using, you might have a Web browser open to view some
sort of online documentation, or you might be using a program such as xman that displays Linux
manual (man) pages in a graphical format.
It is not a given, however, that graphical IDEs are better than using discrete tools. Rather, it is a
matter of which model developers feel most comfortable using, which method makes developers
the most productive, and which approach best fits each developer??™s personal working style. Many
long-time UNIX and Linux developers feel more comfortable with and work more productively
using command-line tools: vi or emacs for writing and editing code, gcc and make for compilation,
and gdb and kgdb for debugging.


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