Scripting brings the power in power user!!!
Decades ago using a computer meant working at the command line. You had to type everything. People quickly learned how to script. Some called it making batch files (MS-DOS). But for power users it was more than just chaining a list of simple commands to run in order. There was logic and intelligence in what they put together. They used variables to make the script multi-use. They used conditional statements so the script could react to different inputs in different ways. Scripting was a way to become much more efficient and increase productivity to new heights. We could even accomplish some amazing things with data. And often we could even have the scripts run from cron or other schedulers so we could accomplish tasks fully automatically, even when we were not at the computer. And here is something a lot of people don't think about. Scripting IS programming. Once you start writing scripts you are making computer programs. All a computer program is at it's heart is a series of commands for the computer to accomplish.
Now people use computers with a graphical interface. We click on boxes and drop downs and slide windows around the screen. This means it was easier to learn to run the computer. Everything was right in front of you. You were given a set of options to select from, and you only had to click on what you wanted. The GUI decreases productivity though in several ways. First, you usually have a very limited set of options. If there are too many options on the screen it gets cluttered and ugly. With the command line the program can have a lot more options. The only thing is that you need to learn what they are. So it is harder to learn. But it gives you a lot more flexibility. Second, you pretty much have to do everything manually. It is very hard to try to automate processes from graphical applications. Some programs do have scripting languages. Think of Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). You can create scripts that can perform actions within Excel, Word, or Outlook etc. But now you are doing programming or scripting. Microsoft has also now released PowerShell which takes VBScript and VBA to a whole new level. What is happening here is that you are starting to interface with the computer again at a command line level basically. You just happen to be doing it on a computer that also runs a graphical interface. Under the GUI there is always still the command line.
Windows administrators who want to consider themselves true power users will learn how to use PowerShell. PowerShell will allow the Windows admin to be able to significantly increase productivity. They will also be able to accomplish so many things that users stuck to using only the GUI can only dream of.
The Linux operating system can be installed with a GUI interface so it can be used as a GUI workstation. However, when you use it as a server it will run in command line mode. So you interface with it exclusively through a command line shell (usually BASH). The shell has it's own full on scripting language that is extremely powerful. You can use a combination of the programming tools in the shell with various Linux commands to make incredibly powerful programs that can accomplish great things. I recently had to pull some specific information from sets of logs on different servers so I could get some counts and usage details. I was able to write a BASH script that would read through the 10 log files on each server, cull the information buried in the files, collate and reduce the data, make the calculations, and write the output in a report on the server. I was able to write the script on one server and then simply copy it to the other 7 servers, re-run it, and have all 8 reports. Without the script it would have been almost impossible to do by hand. The log files were thousands of lines of data each.
So if you are ready to take your computing to power user take the leap and start scripting.
Now people use computers with a graphical interface. We click on boxes and drop downs and slide windows around the screen. This means it was easier to learn to run the computer. Everything was right in front of you. You were given a set of options to select from, and you only had to click on what you wanted. The GUI decreases productivity though in several ways. First, you usually have a very limited set of options. If there are too many options on the screen it gets cluttered and ugly. With the command line the program can have a lot more options. The only thing is that you need to learn what they are. So it is harder to learn. But it gives you a lot more flexibility. Second, you pretty much have to do everything manually. It is very hard to try to automate processes from graphical applications. Some programs do have scripting languages. Think of Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). You can create scripts that can perform actions within Excel, Word, or Outlook etc. But now you are doing programming or scripting. Microsoft has also now released PowerShell which takes VBScript and VBA to a whole new level. What is happening here is that you are starting to interface with the computer again at a command line level basically. You just happen to be doing it on a computer that also runs a graphical interface. Under the GUI there is always still the command line.
Windows administrators who want to consider themselves true power users will learn how to use PowerShell. PowerShell will allow the Windows admin to be able to significantly increase productivity. They will also be able to accomplish so many things that users stuck to using only the GUI can only dream of.
The Linux operating system can be installed with a GUI interface so it can be used as a GUI workstation. However, when you use it as a server it will run in command line mode. So you interface with it exclusively through a command line shell (usually BASH). The shell has it's own full on scripting language that is extremely powerful. You can use a combination of the programming tools in the shell with various Linux commands to make incredibly powerful programs that can accomplish great things. I recently had to pull some specific information from sets of logs on different servers so I could get some counts and usage details. I was able to write a BASH script that would read through the 10 log files on each server, cull the information buried in the files, collate and reduce the data, make the calculations, and write the output in a report on the server. I was able to write the script on one server and then simply copy it to the other 7 servers, re-run it, and have all 8 reports. Without the script it would have been almost impossible to do by hand. The log files were thousands of lines of data each.
So if you are ready to take your computing to power user take the leap and start scripting.
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