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Transcript from the "Command Line Overview" Lesson
[00:00:00]
>> Jem Young: We'll start with the command line. Anybody know what command line is? Assuming everybody. Yeah, it looks something like this. I'm gonna switch over. So I can say, echo hi. Says, hi. Groundbreaking stuff here. A lot of what we're gonna do today is on the command line. Actually, most of what we're gonna do today is on the command line.
[00:00:25] And it's a little intimidating for people. Especially if you're just using your mouse and inspecting and all these things. But by the end of the day, you're gonna love the command line. You'll see it's so powerful, it's so repeatable. And really, you can just throw that mouse out right now.
[00:00:41] Anybody have a mouse? No, just kidding. Don't do that at home. I don't wanna get blamed for that. But today we're gonna be really comfortable with command line. And we're gonna see, it's just a user interface, just like anything else.
>> Jem Young: So why the command line? Anybody, why the command line?
[00:00:59] I'm gonna ask a lot of questions today, so just get used to it. Wait, I already heard from you. Taylor?
>> Speaker 2: Not all servers even have a GUI.
>> Jem Young: Yes, good answer, that's exactly right.
>> Speaker 3: There's just no limitation.
>> Jem Young: Exactly.
>> Speaker 3: No matter how well designed a GUI is, you just cannot encompass all the possibilities.
[00:01:22]
>> Jem Young: Yes.
>> Speaker 3: That are capable in a command line.
>> Jem Young: Perfect, great answers, everyone. And I love that you all said GUI. GUI stands for graphical user interface, for those who are unfamiliar and never seen it. But GUIs are opinionated. It's someone's opinion about what exactly the user should see and how they should interact with that.
[00:01:43] And how its laid out is completely contextual. In a different country, maybe I wouldn't understand their GUI at all. Because I'm used to the buttons being on this side instead of this side. The command line is ubiquitous. The command line works in every language in every country. Every operating system has a command line, whether it Windows, Mac, or Linux.
[00:02:03] They all have command lines. And if you're proficient at the command line, if you're really good, I'm nowhere near this level, so [LAUGH] I won't say that you'll be faster. But it is faster doing things on the command line, generally speaking. It's consistent, the command line's always gonna be the same.
[00:02:18] The commands are generally gonna be the same, if we're talking about Linux. And honestly, it's easier to script, it's easier to automate than GUIs. And you can write GUIs to automate mouse movements and all these other things. But the command line is just, it's where the power's at.
[00:02:33] And originally, when computers were first invented, it's all people had.
>> Jem Young: We'll just keep it there. All they had were were terminals which access command line. And there was no such thing as a GUI. That's why Windows 3.1 and Mac, and all these things we take for granted now, were revelations.
[00:02:51] Because it made computers more accessible. But if you go back to the old school days, the place where platters on hard drives were this big you could spin them manually to get exactly where you needed to be to access that data. Those people were all using command line and GUIs were just like, wow, that'd be fantastic, maybe someday.