[Info-vax] Suggested DCL enhancement

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 11/10/20 1:42 PM, Craig A. Berry wrote:
> 
> On 11/10/20 11:26 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>> On 2020-11-10 13:45:09 +0000, John E. Malmberg said:
>>
>>> On 11/4/2020 12:21 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>>>
>>>> IDE usage and management UI usage and app user interface designs are 
>>>> all shifting developers and administrators and networking folks and 
>>>> end-users away from the command-line, too.
>>>
>>> I have been doing devops on and QA automation on Linux and windows 
>>> for a while now, and I can assure you that it command line is the 
>>> dominant method used for actually getting stuff configured and doing 
>>> functional tests.
>>>
>>> GUIs are find for end users at admins that have to deal with a few 
>>> systems, but when a small collection of systems to manage is at least 
>>> 100, anything requiring or using a GUI is PITA.   And I have been 
>>> routinely dealing with much higher numbers of systems.
>>> ...
>>> If you are designing a system or application to be managed with a GUI 
>>> instead of those methods, you are going to be hurting your market share.
>>
>> What's the general trend? More command line? Or toward more automation 
>> and simpler interfaces?
>>
>> All of what I'm seeing is trending toward GUI, toward web-managed 
>> interfaces, toward simpler, and toward automation.
> 
> The general trend for server management, devops, and, to a lesser extent
> even development is definitely away from the GUI and back to the command
> line.  Witness, for example, Microsoft Server Core,[1] which is Windows
> Server with no "Desktop Experience," or, in other words, Windows with no
> windows.

Are you sure about that?  Are you sure the intent isn't just Remote
Desktop using RDP?  It's how I ran my datacenter even when Windows
Server still had a GUI presented.

> 
> The whole devops movement is based on the premise that automating
> operations is just another kind of code to write and developers already
> know how to do that.  That code consists of commands written in various
> CLIs.

The biggest reason I ever found for using CLIs was the shortcomings
of GUI based tools.  For example, do you know how much of Cisco's
capabilities can not even be done if you use the web based GUI?

> 
> Development tools and frameworks increasingly promote and even rely on
> commands typed in terminal or PowerShell windows integrated into the
> IDE, though code editing is still generally done in a GUI editor.
> 
> I find all this ironic after a few decades of trying to convince junior
> developers to use the command line and generally being greeted with
> terror and confusion.  But the command line is definitely back.
> 

I don't see that as likely, but it will remain the bastion of
dinosaurs like me.

bill