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In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999)

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412 points conanxin | 1 comments | 27 Jul 24 06:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source
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ndsipa_pomu ◴[27 Jul 24 12:50 UTC] No.41086243[source]▶
One major advantage of the CLI is that instructions/fixes etc are very concise and can be easily communicated. If someone has a Linux system that needs a known fix, then it's trivial to send someone the commands to copy/paste into a terminal. However, if there's a known fix for a graphical program, then it suddenly becomes much harder to communicate - do you go for a textual instruction (e.g. click on the hamburger menu, then choose "preferences"...), or a series of screenshots along with some text?
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1. kjkjadksj ◴[28 Jul 24 19:45 UTC] No.41095482[source]▶
Not only is it good for sharing but for automating functions in script. Imagine managing an IT environment where you have to click around the gui for each and every workstation, versus what these IT professionals actually do which is write a configuration script that does all their setup functions, which they can push to all networked workstations from their office with a single keystroke.

To do that in a gui-centric fashion, the only tools we actually have are textual commands that direct gui action. essentially its a middleman step: if we are already writing our applescript lets say, we might as well just abrogate the actual commands that our applescript is trying to abrogate through the gui system.