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> GUIs on phones/desktop are tremendously productive They used to say that GUIs were toy interfaces and only CLIs could offer real productivity. I don't know
by rahoulb 8y ago
> GUIs on phones/desktop are tremendously productive
They used to say that GUIs were toy interfaces and only CLIs could offer real productivity. I don't know where chatbots are going but I wouldn't expect the current state of the art to be anything like where they end up.
- niftich 8y agoThe reason the productivity of CLIs was often extolled is because throughout most of interactive computing's lifetime, CLIs and scripting have been intertwined. It was possible and commonplace to invoke parameter-oriented CLIs from another process, and use the CLI as a perfectly adequate API, while other interface paradigms like TUIs and GUIs never quite achieved such ease of programmatic manipulation.
- yoz-y 8y agoCLIs are still vastly more productive for repetitive tasks and are quite passable as an API. For one-off things GUIs are usually better.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- larkeith 8y agoThe key here, I believe, is that CLIs are still vastly more productive for purposes on which you're familiar with the pertinent commands; GUIs are generally better for discovery of new functionality and one-off tasks. Chatbots and NL interfaces in general are thus far a failure because they neither improve on these purposes nor provide a third, unique benefit. I could see them being useful for consolidation of services (instead of comparing eight puzza places' sites, go to one third-party pizza chatbot), but there's a very, very long way to go.