I am a huge fan of the command line.  Sure, the learning curve is steeper than for a GUI, but once you know what you are doing, you can be blindingly fast.

Because it is generally assumed that folks who use command lines know what they are doing, the command line tends to expose the full power of a system.  Therein of course also lies a great danger.  Never mind the wisdom of using the command line on a large production system – it’s not something you really *want* to do, but when you are growing rapidly and things go wrong it is often the only way to fix things.

Now even people who really know what they are doing can shoot themselves in the foot, especially when they are operating under intense stress and with little sleep.  I have certainly done it myself.  I still distinctly remember the time where I managed to make every book on DailyLit have the title “War of the Worlds” just minutes before I was due to see my kids in a school play.  Yup, that sucked!

So here are a few suggestions: 

• First, when at all possible avoid using the command line and doubly so if you are beyond tired (easily said, hard to do). 

• Second, have good habits when typing on the command line.  For instance, when I type SQL delete or updates on the command line, I *always* type a restrictive where statement first!  That way even if I screw up, I won’t by accident nuke stuff. 

• Third, command lines should start by default in a safe mode, where if you want to do something dangerous you either get a challenge response or you need to supply an extra parameter.  The UNIX command line does that by having a bunch of commands that are aliased to safer versions by default.

I have written about this before in the context of making it harder for endusers to make irrevocable mistakes, but the damage from the command line can be even greater.  So proceed with great caution!

I am a huge fan of the command line.  Sure, the learning curve is steeper than for a GUI, but once you know what you are doing, you can be blindingly fast.

Because it is generally assumed that folks who use command lines know what they are doing, the command line tends to expose the full power of a system.  Therein of course also lies a great danger.  Never mind the wisdom of using the command line on a large production system – it’s not something you really *want* to do, but when you are growing rapidly and things go wrong it is often the only way to fix things.

Now even people who really know what they are doing can shoot themselves in the foot, especially when they are operating under intense stress and with little sleep.  I have certainly done it myself.  I still distinctly remember the time where I managed to make every book on DailyLit have the title “War of the Worlds” just minutes before I was due to see my kids in a school play.  Yup, that sucked!

So here are a few suggestions: 

• First, when at all possible avoid using the command line and doubly so if you are beyond tired (easily said, hard to do). 

• Second, have good habits when typing on the command line.  For instance, when I type SQL delete or updates on the command line, I *always* type a restrictive where statement first!  That way even if I screw up, I won’t by accident nuke stuff. 

• Third, command lines should start by default in a safe mode, where if you want to do something dangerous you either get a challenge response or you need to supply an extra parameter.  The UNIX command line does that by having a bunch of commands that are aliased to safer versions by default.

I have written about this before in the context of making it harder for endusers to make irrevocable mistakes, but the damage from the command line can be even greater.  So proceed with great caution!