The OpenSSL command line is more or less a test driver / reference for the library. It's a little weird to criticize its UX. Also: it's pretty easy to make something look bananas if you surface every obscure option in its main screen!
Honestly I love the UI presented: concise, shows all the options, a fantastic summary of the CLI without having to scroll a massive man page or website.
I'd love this for all the super complex CLI tools I need to use, as a visual cheatsheet on where to search in the man page.
UIs generated in systematic, composable ways emerging naturally from all the plumbing (pipes, option flags, etc) we already have in place.
Just like when books are adapted into movies, the good adaptations are the ones that are better than the sum of their parts (aren't a direct adaptation). Blind, generic composability is in direct contradiction with this. One could argue that it's the scale that determines whether a better integrated or a consistent but generic solution is better, but in this case I think the article very explicitly demonstrates that the latter approach is what loses out.
I have a very strong and persistent disdain towards the many shell incantations I had to come up with, have to keep around as notes, and have to have AI generated. Having to navigate the maze the article calls a GUI would result in much the same.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills seeing people in this thread regarding this visual any good, especially given how even the article author clearly disagrees, hence "why" the article was created in the first place.
This page has a screenshot of the GUI provided for ls: http://toastytech.com/guis/aux3.html
hmmm, not sure about that. Its the main (only?) interface if an individual wants to mess with certificates or generate them. It is often reported ACME/LE took off because it is easier to configure an ACME client than the annual wrestling with openssl. But if openssl had been easy for common user tasks maybe LE would have taken longer to be adopted.
ffmpeg also has a notoriously difficult CLI interface. Today you can just ask a LLM to generate you a command, the consequences are low if it gets it slightly wrong. The consequences of getting openssl wrong could not be obvious immediately and result in a lot of debugging down the line.
I know that encrypted communication without knowing that your talking to the right person is somewhat useless, but it works for SSH most of the time, there’s no reason it couldn’t work well for https and encrypted db connections etc.