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Comment by gnubison | Hacker News Reader

> complicated

The snippet GP mentioned includes only shell functions, invocations of restic, and echo commands. How could it be simpler?

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simple/fun vs. complicated/scary depends on the target user.

Simple for someone who is comfortable with the terminal. Scary for those who are oyherwise familiar with GUIs only.

Sure, but if I'm not comfortable with the terminal, I probably shouldn't be too loud with my criticisms of shell scripts.

It just seems a pity that knowledge of shell scripts is necessary to do backups.

Yeah I bet there are good GUI tools out there, but I always want to go for the stuff I can script myself, so I can hook desktop notifications into it and such.

It makes it hard for me to recommend backup tools to the non-technical people in my life, because they're looking for GUI solutions with the corners rounded off, and I want something crunchy and scriptable.

With a GUI. I think it could also be less error prone if the user interface guides through the configuration.

Then it’s less scriptable. Many of us would prefer a CLI-based solution for that reason

It doesn't have to be one or the other. The GUI would be for one-off or intermittent usage, and the CLI program would still come in as the primary tool for scripting or recurring use.

Would it really be simpler to have 100 lines of GUI setup and tear down, obscuring the most important part (the commands being run)?

Depending on the GUI, it seems possible. You can also verify input in a GUI

Both sounds good as opposed to instead.

GUIs for simple stuff and 99% of the population, CLIs for hackermans who need the advanced stuff.

You won't find much support for an opinion like that on a site named "hacker" news, haha.

A lot of backup services (tarsnap comes to mind) prioritize scriptability, as I imagine many people run backups from cron or a systemd timer.

I'd personally put the threshold for "complicated" at "do you need a keyboard to be able to use it". So it's pretty complicated.

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