Wouldn’t that be slower to do, simply because checking it got all states, didn’t repeat any and didn’t make up any would be slower than copying a list from the web and quickly turning that into an array by hand with multiline cursors?

But then the CLI wouldn’t be faster anymore and the whole argument most people keep bringing up falls apart.

It is much faster for the one giving the answer. Also, the looking up the man page is something you only do the first time. With the gui the user should also verify before blindly following instructions, but it is usually harder to find proper documentation of gui features than cli commands.

Also those man pages aren’t even remotely written to be understandable by Linux novices most of the time…

That is a fair point. They are dense, technical and at times pretty hard to read. But when a novice asks for help they are always going to either trust blindly or verify. Verifying can be a difficult task for a novice no matter if gui or cli is suggested. I do think most novices would trust the gui way more and feel more in control of it, even if they are basically doing the same thing.

I got an education in software engineering, not computer science, and my experience is in line yours. I had a few courses about fundamental computer science concepts but most of my education was in learning a little about many different areas of software engineering, specializing in a few. Most of the education involved working as part of a software team, using tools of the trade, applying common design patterns and that sort of stuff, even when courses weren’t explicitly about that.

I would never call myself a computer scientist, I don’t have the education for it, I however immediately had a software engineering job ready after graduating and felt prepared for it from day one.

I love what computer scientists do within the theoretical domain because it eventually seeps into mainstream languages and tools, in a way I benefit from. I’m just not involved with it myself, beyond when it reaches practical application.

I dual booted my study pc. Well technically I did. I didn’t use windows for a few months without thinking about it and by then I was too afraid of windows corrupting my linux if I ever booted it. So I effectively just had a Linux machine with half half the disk space. Never had a problem with it though.