To some extent what's bogus about the GUI vs. no-GUI debate is that you /have/ to have an interface to the user at some point, whether this is accomplished with bells and whistles or not. So both the command line and the windowing environment are meant to accomplish the same purpose: closing the feedback loop between user and CPU. I'd like a CS0/CS1 to take a more resolutely historical approach and clomp through the command line era in grand style, taking very seriously the command line switches, man pages, HTML manuals or whatever. Especially in UNIX, these commands were designed to be chained, switched, piped, redirected. They were tiny toys, power tools, micro apps. The accomplished sysadmin had enough of them down to perform serious kung fu. So my CS0 is a combination of command line Linux, Python shell, Python shell invoking command line Linux, Python programs run as scripts, from the command line. This would seem very austere to newbies, but we'd perpetuate the ethos that GUIs are for gimps -- you don't need those handicaps to play the game. But it'd be a mock attitude, i.e. we secretly respect GUIs (the good ones) and write them ourselves. But the command line has lost none of its power in the meantime. However, as I've also reiterated, I'm not designing a CS curriculum. This is a CS/math hybrid, with emphasis on the math. So the Linux/POSIX notation, along with dot-notation, will have a means-to-an-end feel, Python taking us even further, into graphical and tactile output territory for example, e.g. the 1000s-of-frequency Waterman polyhedra (whatever that means right?). Kirby