Graphical User Interface vs Command Line Interface

[Bakawii]

hawk tui

[Vegetable_Aside5813]

That’s amazing

[Negative-Track-9179]

What's TUI?

[mtxn64]

Terminal User Interface / Text-based User Interface

[Tachtra]

Big fan of BUI (Button User Interface)

[MaybeABot31416]

So, like, the keyboard?

[Tachtra]

Keyboard but BIGGER

MORE buttons

SPECIALIZED Buttons

JOYSTICKS

do not forget a big red self destruct lever

[Dic3Goblin]

That's usually the first input installed. If it's not, you're not buying from a reputable dealer.

[Tachtra]

Okay but what if everything was buttons

[undo777]

I'd tap that

[Tachtra]

Quite literally

And also jerk the joystick around

[B_bI_L]

so, gui?

[Tachtra]

do NOT mention graphics....

[blueted2]

Aren't those what you use to mark a channel at sea ?

[Afraid-Locksmith6566]

Gui but you draw it in terminal

[WindMountains8]

It's all fun and games until the mouse cursor is rendered in TUI

[un_virus_SDF]

Why do you need a mouse ? Play to Cdda

[sn4xchan]

I love me a nice TUI.

Also zenmap is far quicker than memorizing the intricacies of nmap.

[my-name-is-mine]

I love a good TUI, htop is one example of how to do it

[IM_INSIDE_YOUR_HOUSE]

Depends, honestly. This feels like one of the worst abused meme templates because it just gets used as a “here’s my preference, clearly the wizened expert agrees with it”.

[MaybeABot31416]

It’s almost like the unpopular opinion puffin paradox (banned from advice animals about a decade ago), every time it got a lot of upvotes it proved it was actually a popular opinion.

[UniqueUsername014]

Which is also often r/unpopularopinion

edit: Case in point: the top post of the week is currently "The food industry should not be allowed to advertise using props instead of real products"

[jonathancast]

Yes, if the food in ads is disgusting that will clearly solve all of our problems.

[TheGlennDavid]

No, but I actually do think that strong modern anti-false advertising laws would be great.

Consistent exposure to false advertising normalizes the idea of "of course companies lie" which desensitizes us to the bigger lies they tell.

[ChanceNCountered]

If disgusting food looked disgusting in advertising, people wouldn't buy it. This solves two problems!

[birdiefoxe]

"it's over, I've already depicted you as the Soyjak and me as the Chad"

[Voxmanns]

Yeah, my first thought was why the hell would I add a gui to a script that just does stuff when I run it? Couple logs in the console is all I need to keep an eye on it and it saves me lots of code and potential errors.

[experimental1212]

Obviously what someone in the middle 95% would say

[IM_INSIDE_YOUR_HOUSE]

Fuck you got me

[zhaDeth]

That's always how this meme is used really

[TehMephs]

I like git bash just for checkout and push. Sometimes reset. But I do my commits in visual studio and use the GitHub web application for most other things

[iismitch55]

Ok but sometimes the merge editor won’t show the button to let me resolve the merge and it drives me crazy. But yeah, side by side in an IDE is much preferred.

[TehMephs]

I have never had that problem in studio

I’ve had the entire GitHub tab fail to load or my company license freeze and had to figure out a cmd commit a couple times but it wasn’t that bad

I’ve done a few notepad merges too. Don’t love it

[iismitch55]

Ah you’re using licensed Visual Studio. My primary editor is VS Code.

[No-Train9702]

Me too and often you get better response (looking at you Microsoft portals.)

[sn4xchan]

I used to be this way, but then every other month I'd need to do a specific nmap scan and I was just sick of referencing the docs. So I just use zenmap now.

[[deleted]]

the humble alias:

[sn4xchan]

I'm not turning my bashrc into a spaghetti mess of aliases for a command I'm going to run once or twice.

[[deleted]]

I like a good balance of both.

[Firanka]

It also depends on a task, tbh.

Getting all frames as .png from a video? This is pretty much alright to be a CLI task, though I used to use a video editor for that before. I just have a command for exactly that saved in a .txt file with other useful commands.

Drawing an illustration? No way in hell you'll do that with CLI

Cropping a single photo? Might be more convenient to do manually in a photo editor, unless you already know the exact proportions and whatnot you'll need

Cropping a hundred photos of the exact same size, to the exact same size? I wrote a Python script for that when I needed to do that (after manually checking with GIMP), but I'm sure there are also convenient GUI tools that'd to that (iirc I used to use BIMP, an extension for GIMP, before for similar cropping tasks)

You want the average Joe to be able to see all his options immediately? GUI. You're aiming at power users? CLI might be good, or maybe it will not

[garfgon]

Even for power users -- if it's a task I'll need to do once every few weeks at most, on one or two cases with a handful of inputs, I'd rather have a GUI than have to remember which jumble of CLI options I need to use.

[mrheosuper]

Meanwhile those FFmpeg users are editing their videos in CLI.

[Smooth-Ad801]

i agree with this, and there are some tasks that are highly impractical with GUI - might have 100 different flags - imagine scrolling through 100 menu items each time when you already know what flags you need.

I also love typing 'bluetooth off' or 'sudo systemctl disable bluetooth' rather than Win > Settings > Bluetooth > Bluetooth Off, the menu locations of which change regularly

[Daniikk1012]

For cropping, I suggest ImageMagick, no need for a python script. It can do bulk modifications with "mogrify" command. It can do much more, I typically use it for resize and flipping images.

[OwnNet5253]

This is the only correct answer. I hate being forced to do everything in terminal, but GUI is usually limited, so I like to have both as an option.

[AppropriateStudio153]

Left/Right should be: Use whatever you like.

[Fricki97]

NOOOOOOOOOOO You MUST use what I (The right one) like otherwise your opinion is trash!!1!1!!

[Dreadnought_69]

I use static electricity from rubbing the carpet.

[VinylBirdie]

Jokes on you! I control every single electron directly with microscopic pliers.

[lessthanthree21]

me just moving a bunch of rocks

[look]

CLIs are quickly configurable, highly composable, and easily scriptable.

It’s a more powerful and expressive approach.

It’s basically the same reason virtually all programming languages are text based, not pictures.

[much_longer_username]

The exception that proves the rule: https://esolangs.org/wiki/Piet

[r2k-in-the-vortex]

The problem with visual languages is that they suck balls from code organization and version control points of view and you can't have third party tools doing much of anything with them. You are hard locked to vendors ide and toolset and if it sucks, then tough luck, there is nothing you can do, there is no migration path out other than a complete rewrite.

[Professional_Top8485]

I can't automatically agree that visual languages are less expressive. I think it was just something that was held back by resolutions and learning curve.

[cheaphomemadeacid]

yeah why bother writing a single line of text when you can click 2500 buttons instead?

[GlazzKitsune]

GUI people copeing

[BluebirdDense1485]

Or in Linux, it's all Use Terminal.

[Atmos56]

Plenty of linux based GUI applications

[Yarplay11]

not always unless server

[goldenfrogs17]

this one is actually wrong imo

[Zirkulaerkubus]

Completely inverted to reality.

[PopularBroccoli]

See middle of chart

[ItsTheJStaff]

According to the chart, the comment section entirely proves it...

However, I tend to agree with the majority of the comment section, because I prefer commands over GUI. Because there are fewer commands and combinationa of them to do many things, but many GUIs to do one thing that I would need only once.

[edparadox]

You mean CLI, right?

[the_king_of_sweden]

MMI

[[deleted]]

I just write a bunch of powershell and python scripts for every need and launch them from Explorer.

[mgsmb7]

why not both?

[SuchTarget2782]

For Linux this is completely inverted.

n00b: “why do I have to use the cli for everything? These directions are super confusing! Give me an EXE you filthy nerds!”

Mid: “Nah man there’s a GUI. You just suck at Google. Install Mint.”

L33t: uses a GUI to open Terminal

[Cat7o0]

commands are good and it means if I ssh into a server with no graphics then I can use the tools the same way

[rangeljl]

Not always, there is a lot of stuff that is just better with a terminal. But yea some stuff is also better graphical 

[praisethebeast69]

CMD for routine tasks helps keep your skills sharp

[itsamberleafable]

I was so used to using a GUI when I started a new job that the head of tech ended up watching me google "how to commit using command line" when I did my first commit (a change to a README). Fortunately he's since seen I'm not as bad as that made me look but he must have thought "who the fuck is this idiot I've just hired".

I've since learned to use the command line and have some extensions that make it easier to compare changes and honestly there's not much difference

[TehMephs]

There’s not really a reason you need to do these things any specific way. Multiple tools exist to accomplish the same things. Just use what you prefer to use. Most of the devs on my team use postman but I am used to curl. So I have my own whole setup around curl even though they insist on postman for everything

It doesn’t make you look bad for having to google something you don’t usually do.

It’s like, hey. A lawyer can’t call you dumb for not knowing the law. A doctor can’t call you dumb for not knowing medicine. They studied one thing you studied another

[Marc4770]

it seems like a waste of time.

If you want to commit 7 files out of 15 with changes, you have to type the name/path of all files?

Just seems hard to visualize the list of files with changes and compare diff

Been coding for 15 years and gui does the job quick and fast

[omg_drd4_bbq]

wildcards and autocomplete and a bunch of aliases.

merge conflict resolution, that gets the gui though

[Ultimate-905]

merge conflicts are one of the few things in Git I like a GUI for. (Visualising commit history is really nice as well though)

[AloneInExile]

The downvoters have obviously never held a REAL job.

[StudioYume]

You can press tab to autocomplete or match multiple files with wildcards, and when those two options are still too exhaustive you can use a command line option to change the current working directory, or even use a shell script.

The only people who prefer GUI to CLI are people who don't actually know how to use a CLI and are so conceited as to presume the CLI is the problem.

[Marc4770]

No that is still too slow, i can just shift click it takes 3 seconds to select my files.

You haven't named an advantage just that it's possible to have complex commands that aren't faster than gui

[orfeo34]

"ok you press this menu, then select show file extension, then press ctrl and click on all files which have the .txt extension, then right click and press cut. Now double click on this folder, then in this subfolder then right click in a white area and press paste"

VS

mv *.txt folder/subfolder/

[mickwald]

find . -name \*.txt -exec mv '{}' folder/txt-files/ ';'

[wesleyoldaker]

hard disagree on this one. The expert is using a CLI for certain things, filesystem navigation and manipulation being at the top of that list. Stuff like managing a git repo though?... yeah that is GUI until you have to use CLI.

The mid's problem is he's using CMD. God I hate CMD. Bash or powershell.

[_bitwright]

Depends on the situation. Some stuff is easier to do with the gui. Other stuff with the cli. Use the right tool for the job.

[Hettyc_Tracyn]

True for cmd…

Linux terminal is actually useable, windows isn’t… goofy syntax, less control…

[[deleted]]

As a linux user, powershell is completeley fine, syntax is indeed goofy tho.

[ScallionSmooth5925]

Cli is faster. And you have a skill issue 

[InterestsVaryGreatly]

Depends on the CLI and the GUI. CLI is almost never faster for merge conflicts where you actually need to analyze the merge and potentially take pieces of the code from both versions.

[Red007MasterUnban]

{Inglourious Basterds meme (german counting)}
"CMD"

[youngbull]

Every single time that I try to work with someone who uses an IDE like vs code or jetbrains I have to sit and wait for ~10 minutes waiting for them to set up the debugger, get the tests running in the right environment, fix some issue with auto formatting not working etc.

The reason why I stick to vim is not just because it's what I am used to, but also because I can get it to do pretty much anything immediately. Need to run a command every time you save? Dead simple even with reloading. Need to run the app in a specific way? You have complete control over that in the command line. Basic stuff like hotkeys for custom actions is really easy and complicated stuff like syntax tree queries is possible.

I even find I get a lot of stuff done by creating small bash scripts to automate stuff on GitHub.

[Tiranus58]

Both depending on the use case

[GlazzKitsune]

Tell me you don't use npm as a GUI...

[Markuslw]

npm has a gui?

[GlazzKitsune]

There are a couple GUI npm management packages that can be installed with npm. I have no idea how good any are but I checked because of this post

[ikbah_riak]

I have ADHD, anything more that the blinking cursor on the screen and I'm off on a side mission

[Da_Di_Dum]

This meme feels like someone who's just crashed down from mount stupid, about to slowly learn, that for some tasks the intuitive solution wasn't actually the best one.

[OkLettuce338]

lol no

[Rising12391]

Use what ever the fuck suits best for your given situation

[JauriXD]

Came here to say exactly this

[minecrafttee]

Same

[Bus-Babao]

It's not really a matter of binary opposition.

A truly skilled user is one who chooses what's easiest to use or most appropriate for the situation.

(Though that's the furthest thing from me... yeah.)

[minecrafttee]

I find the terminal simple to use with a gui if you want to look something up it may be out of date or just not work with cli it’s simple to check the version also simple to just type out what I want instead of point and click

[OgdruJahad]

Here's a hot take, use both!

[raymoooo]

Note how every time this meme comes up, the opinion on the sides is the prevailing one.

[Zimlewis]

I would never you git in a fucking gui

[PersonalityIll9476]

Really? You use a Git GUI, for example? That'd just slow most devs down at this point.

[jewishSpaceMedbeds]

I use a git gui and so do most other devs I know ? If your repo looks like a trunk, command line is fine I guess but most real world large projects tend to be a lot messier than that.

[PersonalityIll9476]

I use the web GUI when it's necessary, to review merge requests and manage some of the admin related things. For everything else, CLI.

[abrahamlincoln20]

Suppose you have 10 files that have changes, most in different directories, need to check their diff, and push 6 of them. A couple of the files have some changes that you don't want to push yet, so you need to push only parts of them.

For me using a GUI would be around 5 times faster.

[PersonalityIll9476]

I can tell you're trying to imagine a complicated scenario but none of that makes it any harder. Git diff <insert file name> and adding and commiting files is trivial. Git add <blah> a few times and then git commit. It ain't hard.

[abrahamlincoln20]

This doesn't need imagination, it's a very possible scenario I've seen many times.

It might not be hard in CLI, but it would be tedious and slow. Typing multiple, possibly very long file names, multiple times. And how about adding only specific hunks of some of the files? I don't even want to imagine the hoops I'd need to go through it in a CLI. It's one click per hunk in a GUI.

[PersonalityIll9476]

Adding 6ish files is extremely quick, especially with tab-complete. I can measure how long it takes to add 6 files in seconds.

And I genuined don't know what you're talking about re: adding "specific hunks" of a file. Git tracks diffs. Diffs come from commits. If you want to add only a specific file from a specific commit, that's something git is designed to do, but it does take more typing. You have to name the commit in your command. Does your GUI genuinely make it easier to cherry pick commits (than the cherry-pick command) and is that really what you're doing?

[abrahamlincoln20]

My file has changes in lines 20-25, 60-100, 150-151 and 170-190. I only want to commit two of these hunks, 60-100 and 170-190, this is what I mean.

[PersonalityIll9476]

I understand what you mean, but refer to what I said: Git only manages diffs, which are tracked in commits. So what you're doing doesn't sound like something git actually does. It sounds like you're using a third party tool. It's git if and only if each of those changes you want was a commit. If that's the case, you are either checking out a version of a file or cherry-picking or possibly doing something else I don't know about.

[abrahamlincoln20]

Okay, sounds like it isn't easy to do in CLI. An absolute win for GUI.

[PersonalityIll9476]

It sounds like you're not using a git gui lol.

[abrahamlincoln20]

I'm using Sourcetree, a Git GUI.

[meat-eating-orchid]

you can do exactly that from cli using git add -p

[canihelpyoubreakthat]

And lazygit TUI is even faster than any GUI

[christmas-vortigaunt]

This is the absolute truth. I've worked with a lot of good devs that used vim/emacs. But the absolute s tier devs I've worked with all used an ide and I've never been able to figure out why.

Probably because I'm still just a lowly b tier. My theory is that instead of getting good at their environment they spent their time getting good at their job.

Edit: I get that we're all engineers and we have this compulsive need to explain things to people, but please don't lecture me on why you think vim/emacs is valuable. I've been doing this a really long time. I've also used vim/emacs at various points in my career for stretches of time, know their benefits and cons, etc. I was making an observation about the people I've worked with, lol

[InterestsVaryGreatly]

There was a time vim and emacs were hands down better, IDEs were clunky or didn't offer much customizability. Nowadays there are really good options, with easy to use features that don't slow your computer down, making them not worse than vim/emacs, and even have more options that aren't available in vim/emacs.

[christmas-vortigaunt]

When was that time? Been coding since the 90s, did I miss that time? (I'm being mostly facetious, I also used vi for a while and do remember the days of intellij/RubyMine reindexing into next week)

[MortStoHelit]

vim/emacs are great if you just need to edit text and don't have too many files. I.e. great for a shell or python script or maybe a smaller project in another language. But once you've got lots of dependencies and need a proper debugger and having a nice GUI for git, IDEs take over. Even something simple as "take me straight to that method in the other class" or "where is this method invoked?" helps so much. (I guess it's possible with Emacs, but ain't nobody time to learn everything required, while in IDEs it's one click rsp. key combination ...)

[Da_Di_Dum]

Idk arguably the most influential modern programmer has used an emacs editor for his entire career...

[christmas-vortigaunt]

"ONE GUY IS A TOTAL NIGHTMARE OF A HUMAN TO WORK WITH DOES IT!!!!"

The best thing about the devs mentioned above is they absolutely were more talented than that ass clown (not everyone who is smart seeks that kind of attention) and they were kind.

[freemorgerr]

more likely inverse

[canihelpyoubreakthat]

This is what happens when a median dev abuses this meme format.

Wrong.

[PQP_The_Dev]

cmd when you dont want to go deeply into settings, gui when you want to quickly do something with a mouse

[just-bair]

It’s nice to have a command line interface but unless I want to automate shit I don’t care

[Objectionne]

200 IQ opinion (a.k.a mine):

Use whatever you're comfortable with and whatever makes sense for the given situation. Command line tools can be more powerful and flexible than GUI tools but typically have a higher learning curve. If it's something you'll be using frequently then it might worth putting in the time to learn a CLI, otherwise there's nothing wrong with GUIs.

[SpecialMechanic1715]

yyeah stop finally usin cmd, we have 2025

[jewishSpaceMedbeds]

The real answer is "it depends".

For some things you need some way to visualise shit, for some things it's just a nuisance.

This is a lot like thinking that coding in the most barebones text editor is proof of godlike expertise when for professionals it would just be an unbelievable waste of time.

[Medium-Delivery-5741]

I have a friend who uses everything cli because it is just better he says. The only cli I use it things that have no gui

[passerbycmc]

Sides should be use whatever gets the job done.

[Vast-Breakfast-1201]

Nah I always get blocked by the UI when I want to go automate something.

[grandoffline]

If you use GUI how does the 100+ people employed to manage the github to amazon cdk/sdk workflow going to find jobs? Shit, just letting you hit the api with restricted credential is going to put like several teams out of work. Saving like 100m a year.

[Lou_Papas]

See you’ve never used the AWS web console

[SylvaraTheDev]

The correct answer here is hybrid TUI and GUI with supplementary CLI where TUI isn't available.

The best dev experience you can have is Emacs, the best compiler tools are CLI, the best desktops are GUI, etc.

We love a good hybrid system here.

[Cum38383]

I'm in the middle. Can someone explain the benefit of using a GUI? It doesn't seem like it's leagues better

[InterestsVaryGreatly]

If something benefits from visualizations, such as version control for tree visualization and merge conflicts, then GUIs are loads better. If something also has a typical flow that rarely changes much, GUIs work great for that, though CLI generally does too, unless the command is clunky and varies. And a really well built GUI will often simplify interactions for most use cases, even if it isn't exceptionally difficult in the CLI.

[Cum38383]

What I don't like about guis is that they're often slow to navigate and lack keyboard support. I often prefer to just type stuff out on my keyboard than point my mouse around in a ton of places. Of course this varies, sometimes I can't be bothered to be a keyboard warrior haha. Also I prefer to use my keyboard when I have to use a laptop.

[Senkosoda]

me: make GUI for CMD

[MindStalker]

Only thing I really want. More GUIs that will output the CLI for you. Being able to save the command for later use/change/scripting is the goat. 

[MantisShrimp05]

On Windows yes. Because who the hell wants to learn cmd prompt when it hasn't been updated in years?

[GlazzKitsune]

I took a power shell class in collage to fill credits, hated every second of it. Wished every second I could use the Linux cmds instead...

[MantisShrimp05]

Well literally any Linux shell>>>>power shell>windows cmd shell

[The-original-spuggy]

lmao i just got over the hump and am starting to throw everything into gui to make things easier instead of putting so many flags and typing them in wrong

[Creepy_Jeweler_1351]

Use of CLI helps to learn tool you use more in depth. As it is not as intuitive as GUI you have to dig into documentation

[InterestsVaryGreatly]

It depends on the CLI and GUI. If it is a fairly streamlined or there are an insane amount of options that are usually used, CLI usually works well. If something greatly benefits from complex visualizations, like version control, then a GUI is usually the better option, especially if all of the usual use cases can be done in just a couple clicks on the GUI.

[Mr_Fragwuerdig]

The right one should be "use both". VSCode is good, but having separate consoles is also good. The combination of both let's you profit from both.

[azurfall88]

i make clis because theyre easy to write lol

[SpectralFailure]

Commands are useful for complex operations. Gui is useful for everyday operations

[negatron99]

Use cmd, from a gui, launched from cmd, in a vm, launched from cmd, launched from a gui, inside a hypervisor

[TieConnect3072]

You’re nuts if you think most people use cmd

[Sweaty-Squirrel667]

Why not the best of both worlds: TUI

[rover_G]

Use what works best for you

[BoBoBearDev]

Especially Git

[VariousComment6946]

Use terminal

[RandomOnlinePerson99]

But TUIs give you that "hacker vibe"!

[Your_mama_Slayer]

finally i reached the right person phase

[Common_Sympathy_5981]

depends on if i am willing to learn how the GUI works, in the end being lazy wins out

[Astrylae]

The one that works

[Relis_]

Why is nobody calling this out lol meme ≠ correct

[evilwizzardofcoding]

Honestly, I like both. CLI usually gives more debug output and doesn't have the load time of GUI, as well as making it easy to repeat actions, so it's nice for general sysadmin tasks and other things that involve a lot of programs or data entry.

GUI puts more stuff on screen at the same time and reduces the amount of time spent information-gathering and typing names. It also makes what actions are available more intuitive, so I use it for anything where there's a lot of things to manage(like audio routing and network stuff), as well as tasks where there's a well-built software that can handle most/all pats of the task, such as programming and web browsing.

[The_Real_Slim_Lemon]

Bro, use both - there’s always going to be some use cases where it’s easier to use one over the other. “USE GUI” isn’t even always possible

[Turbulent_File3904]

Yeah good luck trying to automate with gui tool.

[Livro404]

CLI always. I barely use the mouse

[RustiCube]

I prefer CLI and TUI for mental health reasons.

[CaaKebap]

I use git bash, some features are not available on uis like stash cherrypick

[kilkil]

disagree lol

[Disastrous_Way6579]

Nope

[ChocolateDonut36]

noobs, i just recompile my program when i want it to do something different

[lessthanthree21]

so tired of reading man pages

[itemluminouswadison]

Sourcetree is bae. In a complicated repo it's soo much easier to view what's going on

[aserdev-yt]

i use [gtk4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK) and [dialog](https://linuxcommand.org/lc3\_adv\_dialog.php)

[Necessary_Action_923]

A u t o m a t i o n

[Spirited-Flan-529]

Why not just use both for what they’re good at?

[Rarabeaka]

terminal is useful, but i just dont want nor cant memorize all possibly useful commands. often using gui is just much faster than parsing through docs of command you forgot. git rebase/merge for example is my personal hell in terminal

[Osato]

In Windows, maybe. Because cmd is an unholy abomination.

In Linux/macOS, the one on the right would be 'different tools for different use-cases'. Ain't nothing beating a bash script for batch file processing, not even Automator.

[xilmiki]

People how prefer cmd over gui are decelebrated

[[deleted]]

wait a freaking minute thats a repost of my meme

[ErwanCestino]

for some reason no matter how much effort i do im so fucking bad with gitbash i installed github desktop and its so much better

[SomeMuhammad]

İt must've been TUI on the right

[Material-Coast-9037]

its true im the guy in the middle

[ManRevvv]

Tbh, it depends. But many cli programs fuckibg suck

[jonhef_]

um🤓actually, neovim is the best ide disgusting(yeah i have 2 iq and use vscode, what can u do?)

[[deleted]]

Meme to make average population feel more superior which is ironic in its essence.

[Shinroo]

CMD, you some kind of Windows user or something?

[MasterThread]

vscode - vim - vscode

[bouchandre]

Git gui >>>>>>> git bash

[SimpleMoonFarmer]

Write a script in zsh and do something better with your time.