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Ask HN: Why were GUI tools more popular with web devs in the 2000's?

by ccajas on 8/22/20, 9:33 PM with 2 comments

In the decade of 2000's we saw a plethora of graphical interfaces being used for web site and server management. We had Plesk, cPanel and WHM come into widespread use. To spin up a complete web stack all you had to do was open XAMPP, tweak a few control panel settings, and away you go. Similar with MAMP on Mac platforms. Uploading files could be done with a myriad of FTP software with drag-and-drop interfaces.

Then the transition to more CLI based tools took on strongly in the 2010's and its momentum does not appear to let up. The benefits of CLI completely are discovered in that you have more control, everything is more "exposed" and with more flexibility. About the most popular GUI tool that still stands today for web devs are IDEs.

I still find it peculiar that in the past web devs had more interest in user-friendly GUIs. It's peculiar because in the past, modern software development in general did start out with command line tools, but the recent past of web development was full of windowed apps, with tons of forms and visual interfaces. "CLI discovery" was rather delayed for web devs and I'm wondering why.

  • by uberman on 8/22/20, 10:14 PM

    CLI interfaces have none of the inherent benefits you describe.

    * They are not inherently completely discovered

    * They do not inherently offer more control

    * They are not inherently more flexible

    In fact, I would argue on all points a GUI interface is inherently FAR superior to a CLI interface in each of these measures. GUIs clearly offer more control and clarity. Ever try to specify a partial list of US states via a CLI?

    HOWEVER:

    CLIs crush GUIs in my opinion on two CRITICAL dimensions

    CLI are scriptable

    and more importantly

    CLI work over SSH (a rather low threshold to cross)

    The ability to productively work in a terminal over SSH is (in my opinion) at the core of the resurgence in popularity of CLIs and other terminal based apps like vim and emacs as well. Yes, chording is productive and even well supported by most gui editors, yet these terminal editors remain super popular I believe in large part thanks to their ubiquity and ability to work over SSH.

    Just my two cents and is not an attempt to start a flame war.

  • by dave84 on 8/22/20, 10:28 PM

    Windows was more prominent and didn’t have a real cli culture, Internet Explorer was still king back then. Dedicated Linux servers were expensive, virtual servers didn’t really exist, most people spinning up VPSs today would only have been able to afford shared PHP hosting with no shell access. And most importantly, web development was much simpler back then.