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GUIs

Anyone using a GUI is clearly being difficult on purpose, and here's why.

Documentation is Impossible

If you want to tell someone how to raise an issue on Gitlab, here's how it's done in the GUI:

1. Find your project

2. Locate the picture on the left which kind-of looks like a card with another card behind it.

3. Find the button at the top which says 'Create Issue' and click on it.

On the command line, it's just:

`glab issue create`

There's no searching, no interpreting what some designer thought 'configuration' should look like as a picture, there's just commands.

What about standard users?

Standard users don't look around and find new features. They don't click through various menus, intuitively understanding that three dots will allow them to eventually get to a configuration menu where they can change their email. They ask for help, netsearch the problem, or just give up. They don't have strong opinions about interfaces, or any intuitions about what a hieroglyphic for 'configuration' might look like.

Automation is Impossible

Torrenting with a GUI involves starting up your torrenting client, then shutting it down at the end. Switch over to the command line with the command `transmission`, and you're set to give it rules. You can start every day at 3am, and stop at 9am, or if you work in an office, just torrent any time you're at work.

With a little extra scripting, you can start torrenting any time your phone isn't in the house (which probably means you're not in the house).

Every single task you need to do through the GUI is a task which stays with you, on repeat, for as long as it needs done. You will *never* be rid of that menial irritation, and even if it's 'just a couple of clicks', those clicks add up, and you have to remember when to do them.

Everything Looks Different

Windows 10 has a hodgepodge of different bar-types within its own system, from the 'Settings' window, to the Control Panel. Linux Desktops often bring things together, but you're still dealing with both GTK and QT apps, each with separate theme configuration.

The terminal, however, it a single interface. There is no 'htop' theme, it's just htop, and it uses the same font, letter size, and everything else as the rest of the system, because you theme things once, and everything follows suit.

They're All Slow

Compare any terminal app to a GUI app doing the same thing, and the CLI works faster 100% of the time. Calendars, email, remote connections, text editors, all of them load, then run, faster than the GUI equivalent.

They Only Work with the Head Attached

CLI apps work on any machine, with or without a monitor - just connect, and go. The moment you get a GUI app, you either need to make sure you're physically connected to the machine, or set up some web-interface to remotely interact with it. And if 3 people need to connect to a machine running a GUI app, you'll need multi-user login support, and the resources to run those three interfaces at the same time.

Once again, the CLI is just 'do as you please', with no faff or setup required.