Command Line vs. GUI
In other Boot.dev courses you may have run your code by clicking a "Run" button. But as a real™ developer, you'll likely run your code using a command line interface (CLI) instead. For example, in Python, you would run a Python code file like this:
python main.py
What's a CLI?
You'll often hear the terms "terminal", "shell", "command line", "CLI", and "command prompt" used interchangeably (despite some technical differences) to refer to the same thing: a program that allows you to interact with your computer in a text-based way.
What's a GUI?
If you don't have a technical background, you're probably used to interacting with your phone or computer using a graphical user interface (GUI). When you use a mouse to click on fancy icons, buttons, and menus, you're using a GUI.
To be fair, it's usually easier to teach people to use a GUI than a CLI. You can simply point to things and say "click here" or "drag this there". But GUIs do have some drawbacks:
- They're weak. You are given much more control over your computer through a CLI. With a GUI you're limited to the options that the developer of the GUI has given you.
- They're slow. Once you know the commands to type, it's much faster to type them than to click through endless menus with a mouse.
- They're not as reproducible. If you want to share a set of instructions, you can just copy and paste commands without worrying about screen sizes and user preferences.
- They're not automatable. It's easy to write code that manipulates text (as you've seen in Python), but it's much harder to write code that manipulates GUIs.
- They're not as cool. You will be invited to 90% fewer romantic outings if you are a GUI user.
Assignment
In your terminal, run the following command:
whoami
When you're done, answer the question.
What happened when you ran the command?