Cheat Engine

AhMunRa · Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 10:21 am Post subject: Why CLI will never die.

A decent read about why the CLI should not be ditched. I know people that something similar to this has happened to, hell it has happened to the guy that manages our corporate firewall, which is web gui based.

http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-center/why-guis-suck-revisited-515

Geri · Moderator Reputation: 112 Joined: 05 Feb 2010 Posts: 5627

People just want to click on icons like idiots. Commands? Keyboard? Oh no!

I cannot even imagine the world without crappy good old command lines. Especially on Linux. Usually every advanced tinkering happens in CLI. It is just much easier to implement tons of commands than making GUI for it too, not to mention what happens if the system is not able to start any GUI and you have a blinking cursor to fix it. CLI doesn't need any special resources and still offers much more possibilities than GUI. It would be just plain stupid to drop it.

AhMunRa · Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 11:54 am Post subject:

I run all my servers headless so there is no need for a gui other than xServer.

ZacTheSin · Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 8:19 pm Post subject:

The only problems I have with CLI is remembering commands + typos.
That all comes with practice though.

atom0s · Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 8:44 pm Post subject: Re: Why CLI will never die.

ipivb · Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2011 3:58 am Post subject:

^ thank you.

I wrote a very long reply against this article with very detailed arguments, but decided I just didn't have the energy to deal with the potential negative feedback.

Creating a GUI for every command is not hard at all. In the end, it saves the users a lot more time, which is worth any extra time the programmer has to take.

If all you have to fix a computer is a blinking cursor... you need a fucking new computer and probably a better operating system. Today, even all BIOS and OS installations have at least text based GUIs since over a decade ago. With modern computers, if you have the ability to display text, you have the ability to display a GUI.

Command lines are utterly pointless, except for instances where not a lot of effort was put into making something more user-friendly, in which case CLI is needed not because it's necessary, but because a the programmers were, for lack of a better word, lazy.

Geri · Moderator Reputation: 112 Joined: 05 Feb 2010 Posts: 5627

AhMunRa · Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2011 8:32 am Post subject:

@Wiccaan currently at work our email backup server and our firewall device both do this. Neither actually run either Windows or Linux, but I think a hybrid linux kernel. Our backup software also runs on Windows Server 2003, it's gui based and let me tell you, when you really need to get into it to figure why it failed, the gui it a turd (granted it's one piece of software, poorly written at that) but you have to go for the CLI to really get into it. Note the software was written by HP.

Even that web based ruleset he mentioned for Windows I doubt was even Windows. It could have been anything running on it, he never brings that detail to light could have been a net app using a linux kernel as well. That was a very good point in the article that I missed.

Very valid points fellas.

@ipivb Command lines are not utterly pointless. All a GUI is, is a widget that calls the underlying command line to execute the command. Don't believe me, have a look in System32 folder.

Here is a list of the pros and cons of each.

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000619.htm

Don't rule out either, they both have their place in computing.

atom0s · Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2011 11:08 am Post subject:

AhMunRa · Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2011 12:54 pm Post subject:

That's a very interesting point. And I have not seen the same in any article like that either. I'll have to start looking out for that now.

ipivb · Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 2:48 am Post subject:

@geri like I said, I don't have the energy to debate this. So instead I'll leave a good analogy... why bake a whole cake and not put frosting on it? The GUI makes things look a lot better and in most cases, easier to use.

Also, if a company's computer are so old that they are actually breaking down and are very hard to fix because all you have is a blinking cursor... it may be costing more money to pay IT guys than it would be to buy new computers. You would buy a new car if your old one costs more to fix than it would cost to buy a new car.

As for you "GUI is for idiots" example, I agree. However, that's not a very valid argument for CLI. The windows registry editor can really mess an OS up, and very seldom is anyone actually dumb enough to go in and play around without knowing what they're doing.

Geri · Moderator Reputation: 112 Joined: 05 Feb 2010 Posts: 5627

Hans Henrik · Posted: Sun May 01, 2011 3:09 am Post subject:

EDIT: read the article now. LOL. Laughing

just a note...
If you want to search for a file that may be anywhere on the partition, on windows Vista and 7, What do you need to do? the built-in search function is NOT RELIABLE. it uses some stupid index shit, indexing ONLY FOLDERS MARKED FOR INDEXING. AND YOU CANNOT BE SURE IT HAS INDEXED SINCE LAST CHANGE.

hcavolsdsadgadsg · Posted: Sun May 01, 2011 4:01 am Post subject:

indexing is for speed, you can search without it. it will ask if you want to specifically index a folder you are searching through.

ps xp had the indexer too, a shitty version

ipivb · Posted: Sun May 01, 2011 4:24 am Post subject:

Typing in the start menu does only search the index.

If you go to any specific folder, or just the C:\ drive and search in the box in the top right, it will do a classic search (warning you that the search may be slow, and asking you if you'd like to add the location to the index).

Even if that command line was the only way to do a classic search, a more robust GUI program could be coded with not more than a handful of lines... and would be a lot more useful than typing in redundant command lines, then manually navigating to the file.