If you're using a GUI, that means whatever you're doing you're not doing a lot of it, since you don't need to automate it. I would expect a world-class enterprise engineer to be able to automate most tasks, and from that they would be very comfortable with the command line.
Can you do everything with a GUI that you can on a command line? Yeah probably, if the developer is at all the features properly. Can you automate it easily? No not at all. So the more you do something the more you tend to want to deal with the vocabulary of the command line because it's more expressive and allows for automation.
I will die on this hill!
Documentation too. Frontends change all the time, but CLI tools usually don't, so you can usually rely on old documentation. But have you ever tried googling how to do something in MS office, found and article from half a year ago and found that none of the things it mentions exist anymore? It's ridiculous how much time people waste trying to figure out stuff multiple times because it changes so much.
Depends on what system you’re running, and especially what task you’re doing. Trying to operate firewall rules via CLI is an exercise in self-inflicted pain, as is trying to set a complex cron schedule without a handy calculator.
Junos CLI is a real treat. I work with the SRX line regularly, particularly the SRX4600 and the SRX300 series.
CLI debuggers can't hold a candle to the Visual Studio debugger. This is generally not something you automate, and I haven't met many engineers that know
gdbwell. But pretty much anyone can use VS debugger.
Honestly, some things can be done faster/as fast on GUI. So really just use whatever increases your productivity.
IMO GUIs are always faster when it's something you've never used before, or use very infrequently.
CLI is better if you're used to the task you're doing, or automating things. But for infrequent tasks looking up the commands (or looking at old notes to find it) is very slow and rather annoying.
Pshaw! CLI and GUI? Real network engineers make hand crafted API calls!
I love xkcd 🤣
You gotta admit, it's fun to meme the opposite camp. Whether you are a GUI or CLI person.
But you look way cooler when using the terminal for most of your stuff 💁♂️ also using a riced out window manager and riced out Vim config for which you spent hundreds of hours on customizing every aspect of it :p normal people don't know what the fuck is going on on your pc so you can feel instantly feel superior to those normies! Ah also btw i use arch ;)
I use both. I use the CLI for a lot of stuff but I also use the GitHub Desktop fork for Linux lol. I don't care how powerful git is in CLI, that gui is just so nice imo
It took me forever to realize I could edit config files in a graphical text editor. When you have a really long file it's just nicer to have properly formated text wrapping and a scrollbar with a preview box.
Exactly. Use the tools you have the way they fit you best. If it aids your work flow learn the CLI commands you use the most. If it's something obscure or rarely used, use the gui.
Another not mentioned benefit of becoming comfortable with using the cli is that you then can more easily script stuff.
To get annoyingly serious on a funny post, the one huge danger of GUIs that I've personally witnessed in many of my juniors is that they abstract away the need to understand the tool you're using.
I regularly use a Git GUI, and I might have to google the rebase command for more complex tasks, but I know how Git works. I know what I can do with rebase, even if I don't exactly know how to. If you only live in the GUI, you can get far never understanding the system. Until one day, when you fuck up a commit or a push, and you're totally hosed because there isn't a pretty button with the exact feature you want in your GUI.
Somehow I've made it 7 years without messing up a git command that I couldn't fix in like 2 seconds. I primarily use vscode's source controller more featured source controllers like sourcetree feel overly complex and typing out git commands is fine but you spend more time doing that than you would with vscode's approach. I'm really curious about what you mean by fuck up a commit or push
Yeah, fuck that. It's perfectly fine to build a GUI that makes things a bit easier, but make the GUI so that it resembles the fucking workflow. I hate that when I want to automate something thats super easy in the GUI and it takes AGES because there is no equivalent to what I'm doing in the GUI
So... my only requirement for my tools is that they have a well-supported CLI, and can be installed headless without graphical dependencies. Tools must be scriptable.
That said, it's nice to have a UI. My ideal configuration is a scriptable tool with a good API, and a separate GUI tool that can drive it.
One of the best tools I've used is SuperSlicer. It's a slicer for 3D printers. It has GUI, it has CLI and it has a DLL/SO so you can add its features to your own application. And it's open source if linking against an existing library is too hard for you, lol.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that buddy.
So far I don't think anyone has interpreted the meme correctly, the wikiHow guy is supposed to be an obvious shortcoming expressed as a guy trying to convince himself it's not a problem.
"graphical user interfaces make easy tasks easy, while command line interfaces make difficult tasks possible"
- William E. Shotts Jr., The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction
It has taken me a long time to get comfortable using a Linux CLI (definitely not as familiar with windows cmd prompt/powershell), and I know that if I log into a box anywhere, If it has
shorbashor some variant of those shells, I'll be able to get by.Now, on my home server, moving & renaming a bunch of media files has me really wishing I had a DE installed there to Ctrl + click/Drag-n-drop...
Also, I love using VScodium/Code as an IDE bc of its configurability & rich plugin ecosystem -- but recently I had some performance hiccups with extensions not playing nice together and started (again) down the masochistic path of configuring neovim to use as an "IDE"...
Why not mount your server as a share and use your desktop GUI to manipulate files? Then you can do both.
Laziness so far haha but yes that's a good plan
I always feel that graphical interfaces make easy things difficult, in most cases. A bunch of figity clicking around, instead of a few keystrokes I could press with my eyes closed. They are more discoverable, though.
If you use emacs, dired and wdired together are fantastic for managing files like that. You can even run dired over tramp, so you can manage files on a remote server that doesn't have emacs installed, using the emacs on your desktop. But there are also good cli options, you might want to look at the rename command, as one that's probably installed by default on any given distro. That's outside my expertise, though, as I just use emacs.
Yes I've used rename! In my case, I just need to rename and reorganize a bunch of movies & associated metadata files into directories. I don't have too many stored digitally now, so I think just shaving the yak and doing it manually via file share will work for now.
Never been an emacs user... Seems like quite a rabbit hole
Skip the masochism, try helix. Switched to that + zellij with about 20 lines of config and never looked back
Using the right tool for the right task is a big part of being a good engineer.
thank you.
Someone told me that windows server UI interface has more options than CLI. I got scared of windows server (how do you repeatedly Setup the same server, with a screenshot documentation ???)
It's been a while since I've found that true. You can do everything you want to do in powershell now days.
Yeah, I think MS started adding PowerShell for everything after server 2012 R2.
First of all, most Windows settings are in the registry, so you don't have to go to the UI, you can just upload new settings straight into the registry through CLI.
Second, PowerShell exists and it's awesome!
And third, you can always use UI automation tools if you're bad at registry and PowerShell. Just record your session and run whenever needed.
Newer versions of Windows can give you the exact Powershell code it's executing based on what you've configured in the gui. This is still extremely inconsistent across Windows services though. I don't know that I'd feel comfortable running a headless windows server yet. Too much stuff still assumes you'll use the gui for most things.
I think I really only use GUIs if I am learning something new and trying to understand the process/concepts or if I'm doing something I know is too small to automate. Generally once I understand a problem/tool at a deeper level, GUIs start to feel restrictive.
Notable exceptions are mostly focused around observability (Grafana, new relic, DataDog, etc) or just in github. I've used gh-dash before but the web ui is just more practical for day to day use.
For context, I'm in SRE. I feel like +90% of my day is spent in kubernetes, terraform, or ci/cd pipelines. My coworkers tend to use Lens but I'm almost exclusively in kubectl or the occasional k9s.
Searching a log file? I want
less. Searching all log files? I want log aggregation lol.Github's UI is total garbage compared to basic git commands, though.
You can't manage pull requests, github actions, repo collaborators, permissions, or any number of the dozens of other things github does just from basic git commands.
PSA: Since his finger and the reflection touches, he's likely looking into a one way mirror. There's someone behind the glass.
it makes you a Windows engineer which is worse
"Windows engineer' lmao.
i feel you bro. people in here talking shit like they don’t know that some net devices are literally made for webgui first and foremost, and programmatic changes don’t work for every api even if it says it’s supported (fucking looking at brocade).
if you’re used to cisco cli, shit like juniper or palo alto or f5 can be intimidating when looking at the configs.
but i swear to fucking god if you use gui instead of cli for cisco, we gon have words.
Cisco and Juniper CLIs are terrible imo.. Why won't they just use a proper modern set of tools instead of their own proprietary shit that doesn't interface with anything else?
So much GUI, and never a mouse click. Only the best hackers get a whole new screenfull of GUI for every one of their seemingly random key presses.
https://hackertyper.net never fails to impress.
To be fair. In Star Trek they're not really using a GUI like we use a GUI today. They are using a high level AI to take voice commands. And they use the visuals to confirm. That is not what gooies are today
Yeah but Scotty knows all the keyboard shortcuts for a classic Mac which means that they still somehow exist in the future. So…we can safely assume that shortcuts as they exist now are present in the same mapping as they are in the future which means we have no excuse not to memorize them. Not just copy and paste but opening and maximizing windows via shortcut. It is apparently something that still needs to be done in the future.
And now the timeline is forked.
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I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
It's a different interface for the same thing. Each one has its advantages and disadvantages depending on the job. You should definitely try the CLI if you're into programming or administration
The CLI is like magic words, and a GUI is like Dr. Strange magic with your hands waving around.
Use a computer in whatever way you want and/or need to best get the job done. It's a tool for accomplishing tasks. The amount of random gatekeeping for no goddamn reason in tech/programming/FLOSS is ridiculous.
Hard disagree. I use arch btw
See: Cisco. At least when I last used it, the web server configuration utility added a lot of garbage to your running config that made it unreadable if you swapped back to the cli.
Systems that built the GUI first aren't too bad. Palo Alto UI is pretty decent.
I don't know how fair it is to use Cisco as an example for a GUI.
CLIs are much more comfortable to use.
And can be automated easily.
And it takes less time to do stuff.
When I see an IT professional who can't use the CLI, I assume they're lazy IT professionals.
True
To me, your choice of worlstation OS says a lot more about your priorities.
Mine is Ubuntu. What it says is "I installed it years ago because it was the one I knew most about but now very much regret doing so."
At some point I'll have time and switch. Maybe go with Mint or Debian. There's way too many things that randomly break and it's become rather laggy over time.
I often prefer GUI/TUI, but I always like a good CLI. It makes automating things so much easier
In my experience, CLIs are easier to design but harder to design well. Because of that, when I find a good CLI tool it runs as smooth as silk, but I would easily take a decent GUI over a shitty or rushed CLI.
luci ui on openwrt is so good
Sounds like someone has DNACenter with fully deployed ISE and SDN fabric. I'm honestly a little jealous.
Using the CLI lets you automate things a lot easier, which makes you a better engineer.
Yes, i also prefer GUI.
I'd argue that if you only know how to start your own project using the play button, then you aren't a software engineer.
I've written a pretty big application for my employer in visual studio. Never once have I run a "dotnet build" command. Only ever used the little play button. Guess I'm no software engineer
The real software engineers are those who can 2 minute Google "how to build with cli" their Hello world console app.
The point isn't whether you use the GUI. The point is whether you are capable of doing your job without it. I'm not going to throw shade but personally I hate being at someone else's mercy - such as when the GUI breaks and I am forced to wait for someone else to fix it. One reason I stay away from the JavaScript browser/electron ecosystem is because there are so many opaque, inscrutable tools (namely bundlers and module resolvers) and I have no freaking clue how they work under the hood and they're virtually impossible to debug.
I use the UI for some stuff and then the CLI for other stuff.
I like using IDE's for code as they can annotate the code and other smart stuff (I know vi can do something similar)
CLI is great for bash oneliners and combing through logs or text files.
I prefer CLI for many applications, because GUIs have become more difficult and overwhelming to use.
Using a TUI however makes you an absolute beast mode rockstar engineer
I prefiere using tools like ansible or terraform, but I write the code for it in a GUI from jet brains. Then I deploy from CI, using git from the command line.
Excellent
I have charybdis keyboard with built in trackball, I have hotkey on all my apps, also I don't have to move my hands to use mouse trackball. I mostly use hotkeys in ui apps, I like good ui apps like git fork to view complex repositories, I run circles around cli guys who live in cli (cli is just one off apps for me) when we collaborate or when I drive or teach ppl. Where are some who really good at vim, temux and even tilling vm. I know how they work, I can do things faster in many cases. Eventually it's all about what u like and what works for u, stop comparing workflows, there is always prons and cons to anything, it's not black and white.
Yes it does! Yessir! Yesmam! I'm using the command line to cut my toe nails regularly. I use arch by the way. No, I use LFS actually.
It totally does. GUI is for weaklings.
GUI requires much more software engineering and development hours than a CLI to create. So yes it makes your a worse engineer; don't wait for someone to expose a feature to you via API and web interface if you can get there via CLI today. Cripes.
I absolutely love using git on the command line. I'm comfortable with the commands, and there isn't much need for clicking since a lot of it is just typing commands, viewing files/diffs, repeat until files are staged, committed, and pushed up. Who needs a GUI for that?
OTOH, I really like postman for constructing and templating network requests. There are a few helpful panes and forms that just fit better on one screen that I can interact with.
To say working with GUIs makes someone a worse engineer sounds very short sighted to me. IMO the best engineers are the ones who use tools that maximize their efficiency.
Postman is literally the only GUI I use for development, except for a browser I guess. Everything else is in terminals/WSL2 at work
You should give a git GUI a whirl. I like Fork. I definitely made do for years with the command line, but there were things like browsing all the diffed files between 2 commits that feel like inherently visual tasks to me, and the GUI makes that so much more natural.
