[hijacking part of a thread from Keegan] Keegan Holley writes: >My gut says this is as much a product of Space being new as the general >skeptcisim most >router-jockeys have towards GUI/WebUI based management tools.
As the on-box CLI developer, this has always been an area of interest to me. My gut says the router-jockey/gui repulsion is powered by: a) completeness Everything one can do with a router is available in the CLI, where GUIs tend to carry a subset and will have a time lag WRT availability. Part of this is driven by the tool-makers view of how their particular customer set works, and part is driven by the need to attack the biggest and most visible problems. b) text/email friendly Pasting config into email and using "show | compare" allow simple obvious differences. Diffing the output of two HTML divs is, well, difficult. c) power tools If you want to repeat a command, "^P" is blindingly fast. Add in bindings like ESC-. and ESC-/ (and ^R) and you can get many jobs done faster at a CLI than in a GUI. d) trust If I say "set interfaces xe-0/0/0 family inet filter output foo", then I know exacly what I did and how it will work. When the GUI has a field/drop-down and I select "foo", I'm trusting the app to do the right thing, and to let me know when it cannot. e) inertia I completely understand inertia. I'm writing this email using vi under mh, chiefly because no one can pull the procmail needle from my arm. Tools are addictive. If they work, you use them more. If they don't, you use them less. Even in the face of these factors, there's definitely movement in the GUI arena. As tools evolve and are able to show more data and as the volume of data demands tools that let you explore (not just view) data, we need to find ways to keep the valuable portions of the CLI world, while allowing data access for web tools. Visualization is becoming more important, and as someone who tried to make Sparklines in ascii for op script output, I can definitely say that the tty-based CLI is very limiting. In JUNOS, we've had our XML APIs for >13 years, and the tight binding between the CLI and the API ensure that feature parity is constant and consistent. We're working to find ways to expand on this, and while I don't have anything to share yet, I'd love to hear back (on or off list) regarding the items listed above and any additional factors that keep you committed to the CLI with a loyalty that would do Charlton Heston proud. Thanks, Phil _______________________________________________ juniper-nsp mailing list juniper-nsp@puck.nether.net https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/juniper-nsp