Gently Introducing The Command-Line Interface To Your Community

While most modern users of computing devices are familiar and comfortable with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) to interact with their machines, text-based command-line interfaces (CLI) have a much longer and richer history of human-computer interaction. Most computer users will be satisfied with a GUI for their daily computing tasks, but learning to use a CLI terminal is a useful computing skill that anyone interested in modern computational research will want to learn. CLI terminals are still the first choice for remote and cluster computing, for working with very old machines, and for doing complex tasks and programs that a GUI either cannot or will inefficiently or slowly handle. Teaching users unfamiliar with CLI terminals – or similarly text syntax instead of graphical menu options such as in programs like SPSS – can be an interesting challenge, particularly with people who do not feel technologically savvy. Teaching methods for introducing the CLI environment to new users are discussed, such as using visualizations in the form of GUI alongside a CLI, or discussing the underlying process of what the machine is fundamentally doing, are discussed in this talk