Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V
Okay, maybe I’ve been being a bit strong with my language – I don’t really hate GUIs. Heck, I wrote this blog post in a GUI! (Hmm… how about a blog-posting cmdlet?)
A GUI offers a great way for a less-experienced user to learn how to oeprate a product. Obviously, when you’re dealing with formatted text, a GUI gives you all the WYSIWYG love you need to do a better job.
For administration, though, a GUI is just that: For less-experienced users. Once you know how to operate a product using its GUI, you’ll almost always itch to get “under the hood” to operate the product more directly. A well-written command-line shell lets you do so more quickly, efficiently, and consistently.
So I think Windows will always have a GUI – I just think the administrators using it will primarily be the newer ones, or the ones who are still less technically proficient. I think experienced admins who really know what’s going on inside the product will always wind up at the command line… Windows PowerShell.
And incidentally, maybe I don’t “hate” Cmd.exe, either. Well, actually, I do – and always have. See, my first IT job was as an AS/400 operator, and I’ve always bemoaned the fact that Cmd.exe was so limited in its scripting capabilities, and so restricted by the command-line utilities people chose to wrote. Yeah, it’s all we had to work with, but I’m really glad we finally have something better. It’s disappointing that Microsoft took so long to formally recognize the needs of its administrator audience… but extremely gratifying that they’ve finally done so!!!
