also i hope the curl joke is correct i don't use it that much
also i hope there are itysl fans here
this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2025
560 points (98.3% liked)
linuxmemes
28573 readers
1221 users here now
Hint: :q!
Sister communities:
Community rules (click to expand)
1. Follow the site-wide rules
- Instance-wide TOS: https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
- Lemmy code of conduct: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html
2. Be civil
- Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
- Do not harrass or attack users for any reason. This includes using blanket terms, like "every user of thing".
- Don't get baited into back-and-forth insults. We are not animals.
- Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
- Bigotry will not be tolerated.
3. Post Linux-related content
- Including Unix and BSD.
- Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of
sudoin Windows. - No porn, no politics, no trolling or ragebaiting.
- Don't come looking for advice, this is not the right community.
4. No recent reposts
- Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, <loves/tolerates/hates> systemd, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.
5. π¬π§ Language/ΡΠ·ΡΠΊ/Sprache
- This is primarily an English-speaking community. π¬π§π¦πΊπΊπΈ
- Comments written in other languages are allowed.
- The substance of a post should be comprehensible for people who only speak English.
- Titles and post bodies written in other languages will be allowed, but only as long as the above rule is observed.
6. (NEW!) Regarding public figures
We all have our opinions, and certain public figures can be divisive. Keep in mind that this is a community for memes and light-hearted fun, not for airing grievances or leveling accusations. - Keep discussions polite and free of disparagement.
- We are never in possession of all of the facts. Defamatory comments will not be tolerated.
- Discussions that get too heated will be locked and offending comments removed. Β
Please report posts and comments that break these rules!
Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't remove France.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
This website is wonderful
I really like that the link at the bottom of the page says "check out more stuff you should be using" but that URL takes you to a page where the curl article is the only link.
"more coming soon. Or not. I don't owe you shit"
A majestic site indeed. Bravo sir.
I enjoyed every bit of it [=
Now you have syntax highlighting and JSON parsing. Total install size: ~10MB. Total startup time: instant. Total RAM usage: negligible. Total feelings of superiority: immeasurable.
As someone who often does curl API requests and also come up to idea of putting them in jq β I felt superior just by reading this, thank you
the hostility is hilarious π
especially since I had no idea what any of it means π and yet it manages to sound so obvious
The low-tech version of it is that there is a certain technical way of asking computers for stuff, usually across the Internet. To do that as a human, for instance to build a system that can ask or answer these questions, there are a few different tools.
One is Postman, which is a fancy, graphical tool that essentially loads a full browser for interacting with parts of the question, sending it and displaying the answer. Of course, it's a commercial product, so some nice features are locked behind paywalls. The full browser also requires more memory and more time to load.
Another is cURL (alias curl), which is a command line tool, meaning you just enter the various parts of the question as text. It's a little less convenient for more complex questions to remember how to specify the question's parts and adjust them, because instead of a nice table where you enter them, you have to type it in text, but you can use various other features of the command line to make it easier for yourself. In some cases such tools may have advantages over the graphical ones, allowing you to do things the other can't do (or at least not easily).
The whole page is a rant about people using the heavier and commercial graphical tool instead of the lighter and freely available command line tool. It's a tongue-in-cheek continuation of an old argument in some software developer circles, where you will have people who prefer to use certain graphical tools and others that not just prefer command line tools (or generally text-based code), but also feel like everyone should just use them instead. For some, that's just friendly banter. For others, it's a deeply ideological conviction.
Personally, I'd suggest that people use whatever works for them and their team. For example, I have little choice but to use a mostly graphical tool because I work together with people who don't have the time to learn the text-based options. They might be a great tool for me, but if my work is unusable to others, that makes it harder to work together (and accordingly means that I'd be stuck doing everything myself, which I frankly don't have the time for).
Dope, thanks for the ELI5, really appreciate it. I did look up curl and postman after the fact and was able to understand some of the context. What elude me are the specifics, relating to the commands in question. But I can't expect having any understanding of it without having studied networking, I suppose. That's fine. Cheers !!
Technically, it's not so much networking (though parts of it are) as development of webservices and -applications.
Most of the stuff you do with these tools happens in the application (the actual information of the question and answer) and some in the presentation (how the question and answer are phrased), where you don't generally worry about the actual transport of your question across the network.
Basically, if you're asking someone for the time, "what's the time?" would be the application data, while the presentation would be "hour and minute in 24h format" (or some shorthand for that).
The actual network part would be how you figure out who to ask, how you open the conversation ("Excuse me,") or how you transmit the question (speech, text message, written letter) in the first place, but if we're talking about asking for the time, we usually just take those communication basics for granted.
If you would like me to, I could try to explain more about the various options and parts of these requests ("questions") in low-tech terms. I don't think you need extensive knowledge about networking or software development to grasp the basics, if you're interested (and I manage to translate it well enough).
load more comments
(3 replies)
I feel bad that I read that page in Chrome. I'm a failure of a techie.
Tomorrow I must atone by teaching more students terminal commands. Maybe using web API calls with cURL. Or get and some eviloverlord.com quotes?
whenever someone at work says they have trouble with a web service or api I'm like "Idk I can curl it just fine, what's your request look like" and you would not believe how many developers get confused by this question. It's so goddamn frustrating
They know how to use Postman and that is it.
Hey that's not fair, plenty of them also know how to upload hardcoded secrets to postman.
Make sure to save all your secrets in git and then upload from git to postman, that way your security incident is way more repeatable
Security compromise as code.
UPTaaS: Unsolicited Penetration Tests as a Service
I get the same confusion when I prove someone wrong using a universal curl example. The same guy that parses JSON by hand (rather than use a library) canβt remember how to fucking use curl.
The same guy that parses JSON by hand (rather than use a library)
Of course I know him. He's me.
Or a past version of me anyway that was too dumb for its own good and also tried to do datetime stuff and several other complex things. Daft moron, that guy. Glad I don't have to work with such idiots any-
Looks at coworkers
Glad I can now look down on such-
Looks at own work
You know what, never mind.
Wget?
yeah we get it
Big W indeed.
Recursively dumping all data from the server was always a wget thing, it will create a nice directory structure for you and will also convert links in webpages to point to your local file system.
a Tim Robinson Linux meme is two layers of obscure 10/10
The few times I do use curl, all I can think of is this sketch. Glad there are some TR fans here too π
aria2c -c -x 10 -k 5M rocks. Faster and more persistent than Firefox' built-in downloader, while still working on most servers.
Alright someone explain this to me π€£
Excerpted from the manual linked by the other response by @funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works for those who don't want to dig through it:
aria2 is a utility for downloading files. The supported protocols are HTTP(S), FTP, BitTorrent, and Metalink. aria2 can download a file from multiple sources/protocols and tries to utilize your maximum download bandwidth.
Basically, a powerful and versatile file downloader. It includes options to distribute downloads across multiple connections, download a bunch of files at once, automatically retry failed downloads, authorization, cookies and a lot of fancy options.
@MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip has already explained what the specific flags in this case do:
I think (a while ago)
-cis with a temp file to pick up again on failure-x 10: # of connections-k 5M: block size or something
Specifically -x is the maximum number of connections per server, relevant mostly if multiple downloads are queried at once. -k defines the minimum size per block downloaded. In this case, if the file is smaller than 10MiB, it won't be split because that would make the parts smaller than 5MiB. If it is larger, aria2c will split it into multiple connections, up to a default of 5 (unless a differenr value is specified by -s).
I think (a while ago)
-cis with a temp file to pick up again on failure-x 10: # of connections-k 5M: block size or something
I know curl but I don't get the meme?
the sketch is about reselling hair serum to bald men, he controls them because he threatens to withhold the serum unless he can dictate their haircuts.
"You plant the seeds, you get to look at the trees!"
Thanks
Gimme that.
Dear Lord,
Please help OP's reference hit.
In Jesus' name...
itysl fan here: everyone else is talking about cURL, but I see what you did there.... well done!
load more comments
(2 replies)
Me watching curl and wget fail on a multi request HTTP logic stupidity that requires you to submit a random useless header that only the browser will do automatically.
That looks like Alan Tudyk in Chuck but I don't think it is.
I think it's this guy https://m.imdb.com/name/nm4200503 Just saw him in Friendship, which was incredibly awkward the whole time.
Thatβs him, if you like him in that I would highly recommend his show βI Think You Should Leaveβ.
and The Chair Company
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(4 replies)
view more: next βΊ