7 ms·

Love it! Everything should live in the terminal

by fardeem 6y ago

pjmlp 6y ago
Progress, who needs it. https://gunkies.org/wiki/UNIX_Sixth_Edition https://gunkies.org/wiki/UNIX_Sixth_Edition
- b3kart 6y ago
  From the perspective of UX of a power user, you’d need to convince me that all of these Electron apps is “progress”.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Also not, Electron apps are Windows HTA revisited, not willing to do the right stuff. And yes even Microsoft does it, but what to expect when younger teams have the cool ideas to rewrite VS installer with node or use it to drive VS plugins. Still not every graphical application is Electron based, whereas in what concerns the UNIX terminal hardly anything has changed in 50 years.
- smabie 6y ago
  I'm not opposed to GUI's, but they should function like Emacs or the Bloomberg terminal: efficient and dense display of information, keybindings, and preferably some way to input commands directly (where each keybinding is bound to command). Unfortunately, GUI apps today are all slow, based on electron, don't have any keybindings, and are designed with the assumption that the user is stupid. TUIs could be designed in a similar way to GUIs, but the culture around their development is much different. So while TUIs aren't inherently better (and based on their limitations, they should be worse), they almost always are.
  - mynameisvlad 6y ago
    > are designed with the assumption that the user is stupid. Probably because the average user is. I don't mean that offensively, but literally everyone on this site lives in a tech power-user bubble. The average user doesn't care to have a dense display of information, keybindings, and ways to input commands directly. They want an easy to use and nice looking app that does what they want.
    - cat199 6y ago
      these are not mutually exclusive
      - mynameisvlad 6y ago
        They generally are, as each feature adds more work and there's only so much time and money available. While this isn't exclusively the case (some things are universal), the more you work on a feature specifically targeted at power users, the less you work on features targeted towards the general population. For an app that's specifically meant for and targeting power users, that might be an acceptable choice to make, but if you want to target "people", then you're likely not going to be investing in power user features.
- jjice 6y ago
  I think both GUI and TUI applications have their place. For developers and people who are comfortable with it, a CLI can be really extensible, allowing for every application to be opened or used instantly from the same location, and you can automate series of processes. GUIs have their place too. Some applications are more ergonomic with a GUI. I think the two of them can live in harmony.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Everything a UNIX cli does can be done better in a REPL. Modern UNIX has the necessary IPC tooling for REPL workflows like on Xerox Workstations REPL, Amiga REXX, Oberon, Powershell/COM/.NET, Inferno, yet the large majority uses it hardly any different from V6.
- fardeem 6y ago
  Progress isn't about having pretty apps. It's about giving people what they want. I want a thing in my terminal that I can use to track my habits
  - mynameisvlad 6y ago
    Sure, that's what you want. I would argue that people want a more traditional app instead, with what I'm sure you'd consider a bloated and inefficient GUI. Considering that most people don't even know what a terminal even is, and that form regularly trumps functionality in day-to-day lives.
    - deadbunny 6y ago
      Then they already have multiple options for them to chose from...
      - mynameisvlad 6y ago
        The parent comment is implying that people don't want "pretty apps" and want simple functional apps like this exclusively. I am arguing that what the parent commenter wants is valid, but is likely not what the general population wants. In that respect, not sure how exactly your comment is relevant.
        dllthomas 6y ago
        I don't think the parent comment was speaking for anyone but themselves. They expressed a preference, it was rejected as opposed to "progress". The comment about progress being giving people what they want was a refutation of that - like, "it can't be progress for me if it's not what I want." The fact that other people may want what they've been given is great - for them, progress! but it's also irrelevant to the point being picked at. Perhaps I'm being overly charitable to the original commenter.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    It is not about then terminal, rather using it as if the world hasn't changed since V6 came out. Ignoring REPL based workflows, structured IPC with GUIs apps for automation, ability to use any library directly, cramping text into a little window in a high definition screen.
- rvz 6y ago
  I know right. The same old UNIX crustaceans still want to relive the glory days of 1970 with "Everything should live in the terminal" with the chaos of X11, spending countless time editing their dotfiles or starting silly 'Vim/Emacs is better' wars. That ship has sailed. If not, already sunk. I found this toy to be very cute. Too bad my friends are not the typical software engineer that can use this. I'll just point them to a native macOS habit tracker on the app store instead. Friendly enough for them and efficient enough unlike the Electron alternatives. Actual progress rather than re-creating the prehistoric 'good old UNIX days' or turning the users laptops into stove burners with many Electron apps running.
  - DonaldPShimoda 6y ago
    The more I lean into using the terminal and emacs for programming, the more productive I find myself becoming. I can learn one command-line tool and apply it to so many other things by way of the pipe. In GUI-land, this is hardly ever the case. I can't compose different software together, which is something I do all the time with the shell. There are certainly some tools that work better as GUIs, but there are also tons and tons that really are great as terminal tools. No, this may not be a very approachable design for the average non-terminal-user, but that doesn't mean we should decry those who will find it useful. It's okay for different people to use different things. I think I don't agree with the top-level comment in this thread that "everything should live in the terminal", and instead I believe what another response to that comment said: "everything should be exposed to the shell". Being able to compose tools is a huge productivity gain for those of us who care to do it and are used to it.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      > In GUI-land, this is hardly ever the case. I can't compose different software together, which is something I do all the time with the shell. Assuming those programs have been written to be usable from the CLI to start with. Likewise GUI applications can be written to be automated by REPL environments automation, specially if the OS exposes application IPC like COM, DBUS, XPC, Binder, REXX, ....
    - ZeikJT 6y ago
dllthomas 6y ago
Everything should be exposed to the shell, IMO, which isn't quite the same thing.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Indeed, for example via OS IPC mechanisms like COM/XPC/DBUS/Binder, shared libraries.
  - dllthomas 6y ago
    While that's not what I had in mind, in principle yes. That said, in my experience, trying to use a real programming language's REPL for shell-like things is (at best) almost as bad as trying to write a meaningfully sized program in a shell's language. I've many times tried to pin down exactly why. I think it's mostly a matter of focus and the various affordances provided by the ecosystem that have in fact been developed over the past however-many years. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if you've found a niche and setup where it works out great for you - the important things are compositionality and putting what you need close at hand.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      You can do that relatively easy in the context of Apple and Microsoft platforms.
      - dllthomas 6y ago
        Sorry, I said a few things. Which "that" are you referring to?
        pjmlp 6y ago
        Using Windows as example, have a REPL (e.g. Powershell, C#/F# interactive) that interacts with the OS via COM/UWP, DLLs, OLE Automation. So you can from the confort of your REPL get the text selected in e.g. Excel, and use it as input for a function that was actually imported from a DLL for data conversions, for example. Very contrived example, just to show my point.
t0astbread 6y ago
I generally agree. Here's why I like terminal UI: - The constraints force designers to use the space efficiently. That means less details like borders, shadows or hover effects which is relaxing. - It has a (relatively) uniform look and feel and automatically uses my system colors through the terminal configuration. But I don't think every GUI program needs to be TUI. Like, if it's a bad fit for your user base or inconvenient to use or implement for you, it's fine. Do what works best for you, not every app is equal. (Aside from that, most of my "apps" are just shitty Bash scripts that store data in some ad-hoc plain text or JSON file, break when you look at them the wrong way and are hell to debug but I love it. Do give me a good non-interactive CLI or API if you can!)

Love it! Everything should live in the terminal

pjmlp 6y ago

Progress, who needs it. https://gunkies.org/wiki/UNIX_Sixth_Edition https://gunkies.org/wiki/UNIX_Sixth_Edition

b3kart 6y ago
From the perspective of UX of a power user, you’d need to convince me that all of these Electron apps is “progress”.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Also not, Electron apps are Windows HTA revisited, not willing to do the right stuff. And yes even Microsoft does it, but what to expect when younger teams have the cool ideas to rewrite VS installer with node or use it to drive VS plugins. Still not every graphical application is Electron based, whereas in what concerns the UNIX terminal hardly anything has changed in 50 years.
smabie 6y ago
I'm not opposed to GUI's, but they should function like Emacs or the Bloomberg terminal: efficient and dense display of information, keybindings, and preferably some way to input commands directly (where each keybinding is bound to command). Unfortunately, GUI apps today are all slow, based on electron, don't have any keybindings, and are designed with the assumption that the user is stupid. TUIs could be designed in a similar way to GUIs, but the culture around their development is much different. So while TUIs aren't inherently better (and based on their limitations, they should be worse), they almost always are.
- mynameisvlad 6y ago
  > are designed with the assumption that the user is stupid. Probably because the average user is. I don't mean that offensively, but literally everyone on this site lives in a tech power-user bubble. The average user doesn't care to have a dense display of information, keybindings, and ways to input commands directly. They want an easy to use and nice looking app that does what they want.
  - cat199 6y ago
    these are not mutually exclusive
    - mynameisvlad 6y ago
      They generally are, as each feature adds more work and there's only so much time and money available. While this isn't exclusively the case (some things are universal), the more you work on a feature specifically targeted at power users, the less you work on features targeted towards the general population. For an app that's specifically meant for and targeting power users, that might be an acceptable choice to make, but if you want to target "people", then you're likely not going to be investing in power user features.
jjice 6y ago
I think both GUI and TUI applications have their place. For developers and people who are comfortable with it, a CLI can be really extensible, allowing for every application to be opened or used instantly from the same location, and you can automate series of processes. GUIs have their place too. Some applications are more ergonomic with a GUI. I think the two of them can live in harmony.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Everything a UNIX cli does can be done better in a REPL. Modern UNIX has the necessary IPC tooling for REPL workflows like on Xerox Workstations REPL, Amiga REXX, Oberon, Powershell/COM/.NET, Inferno, yet the large majority uses it hardly any different from V6.
fardeem 6y ago
Progress isn't about having pretty apps. It's about giving people what they want. I want a thing in my terminal that I can use to track my habits
- mynameisvlad 6y ago
  Sure, that's what you want. I would argue that people want a more traditional app instead, with what I'm sure you'd consider a bloated and inefficient GUI. Considering that most people don't even know what a terminal even is, and that form regularly trumps functionality in day-to-day lives.
  - deadbunny 6y ago
    Then they already have multiple options for them to chose from...
    - mynameisvlad 6y ago
      The parent comment is implying that people don't want "pretty apps" and want simple functional apps like this exclusively. I am arguing that what the parent commenter wants is valid, but is likely not what the general population wants. In that respect, not sure how exactly your comment is relevant.
      - dllthomas 6y ago
        I don't think the parent comment was speaking for anyone but themselves. They expressed a preference, it was rejected as opposed to "progress". The comment about progress being giving people what they want was a refutation of that - like, "it can't be progress for me if it's not what I want." The fact that other people may want what they've been given is great - for them, progress! but it's also irrelevant to the point being picked at. Perhaps I'm being overly charitable to the original commenter.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  It is not about then terminal, rather using it as if the world hasn't changed since V6 came out. Ignoring REPL based workflows, structured IPC with GUIs apps for automation, ability to use any library directly, cramping text into a little window in a high definition screen.
rvz 6y ago
I know right. The same old UNIX crustaceans still want to relive the glory days of 1970 with "Everything should live in the terminal" with the chaos of X11, spending countless time editing their dotfiles or starting silly 'Vim/Emacs is better' wars. That ship has sailed. If not, already sunk. I found this toy to be very cute. Too bad my friends are not the typical software engineer that can use this. I'll just point them to a native macOS habit tracker on the app store instead. Friendly enough for them and efficient enough unlike the Electron alternatives. Actual progress rather than re-creating the prehistoric 'good old UNIX days' or turning the users laptops into stove burners with many Electron apps running.
- DonaldPShimoda 6y ago
  The more I lean into using the terminal and emacs for programming, the more productive I find myself becoming. I can learn one command-line tool and apply it to so many other things by way of the pipe. In GUI-land, this is hardly ever the case. I can't compose different software together, which is something I do all the time with the shell. There are certainly some tools that work better as GUIs, but there are also tons and tons that really are great as terminal tools. No, this may not be a very approachable design for the average non-terminal-user, but that doesn't mean we should decry those who will find it useful. It's okay for different people to use different things. I think I don't agree with the top-level comment in this thread that "everything should live in the terminal", and instead I believe what another response to that comment said: "everything should be exposed to the shell". Being able to compose tools is a huge productivity gain for those of us who care to do it and are used to it.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    > In GUI-land, this is hardly ever the case. I can't compose different software together, which is something I do all the time with the shell. Assuming those programs have been written to be usable from the CLI to start with. Likewise GUI applications can be written to be automated by REPL environments automation, specially if the OS exposes application IPC like COM, DBUS, XPC, Binder, REXX, ....
  - ZeikJT 6y ago

dllthomas 6y ago

Everything should be exposed to the shell, IMO, which isn't quite the same thing.

pjmlp 6y ago
Indeed, for example via OS IPC mechanisms like COM/XPC/DBUS/Binder, shared libraries.
- dllthomas 6y ago
  While that's not what I had in mind, in principle yes. That said, in my experience, trying to use a real programming language's REPL for shell-like things is (at best) almost as bad as trying to write a meaningfully sized program in a shell's language. I've many times tried to pin down exactly why. I think it's mostly a matter of focus and the various affordances provided by the ecosystem that have in fact been developed over the past however-many years. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if you've found a niche and setup where it works out great for you - the important things are compositionality and putting what you need close at hand.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    You can do that relatively easy in the context of Apple and Microsoft platforms.
    - dllthomas 6y ago
      Sorry, I said a few things. Which "that" are you referring to?
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Using Windows as example, have a REPL (e.g. Powershell, C#/F# interactive) that interacts with the OS via COM/UWP, DLLs, OLE Automation. So you can from the confort of your REPL get the text selected in e.g. Excel, and use it as input for a function that was actually imported from a DLL for data conversions, for example. Very contrived example, just to show my point.

t0astbread 6y ago

I generally agree. Here's why I like terminal UI: - The constraints force designers to use the space efficiently. That means less details like borders, shadows or hover effects which is relaxing. - It has a (relatively) uniform look and feel and automatically uses my system colors through the terminal configuration. But I don't think every GUI program needs to be TUI. Like, if it's a bad fit for your user base or inconvenient to use or implement for you, it's fine. Do what works best for you, not every app is equal. (Aside from that, most of my "apps" are just shitty Bash scripts that store data in some ad-hoc plain text or JSON file, break when you look at them the wrong way and are hell to debug but I love it. Do give me a good non-interactive CLI or API if you can!)