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I love this piece, but this part is hilariously wrong: > Command line interfaces. Once that was all we had. Then they disappeared, replaced by what we thought

I love this piece, but this part is hilariously wrong: > Command line interfaces. Once that was all we had. Then they disappeared, replaced by what we thought was a great advance: GUIs. The CLI is still incredibly relevant, it’s core to this day to single most important task you can perform with a computer: Programming. There’s only a few applications that can safely be considered more important: the browser, the spreadsheet, the word processor, maybe the email client. After that you start to get to things similar in relevance to the terminal. That’s not “disappearing”, that’s having enduring importance that makes it a monumental achievement deserving of a place in the software pantheon. The CLI only gets punished because it was once even more important, before the GUI. We should all be striving to create software with the enduring importance of the terminal.

slver 5y ago
Sorry but what programmers use is not relevant here. The trick is to bring it to mainstream audience in a way that's not awkward. The closest thing I've seen to mainstream terminal is the JavaScript console in browsers but... that's again for programmers (albeit also casual ones). In professional apps like premiere, the closest thing to a terminal is a search box that's smarter than just looking up words in the documentation. And that is preeeeeeetty shit. We can do better.
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  Applications like AutoCAD have long had a terminal window where you can perform one-off scripting, introspection of state, and so on. Blender has something similar with a built-in Python REPL: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/python_console.html https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/python_con...
  - slver 5y ago
    They do, yeah, good catch there. I gotta say 3D modeling/rendering/animation is pretty intertwined with scripting/programming these days. But I still don't find this very mainstream. It's a bit like the JS console in browsers.
- Siira 5y ago
  The primary bottleneck is monetization, isn’t it? CLI workflows are predominantly FOSS and free, so no one has much of an incentive to do the streamlining and marketing that mainstream products need. Some of the stuff that is immediately useful to mainstream users: - ncdu - youtube-dl - spotdl - aria2 - Homebrew Casks People aren’t dumb. If these were marketed properly to them, they would use them.
- hnlmorg 5y ago
  I think there's plenty of examples of command driven text interfaces in popular products. But they're just delivered in a way that either functionality is intentionally limited, or where the order of the commands are interchangeable. For example + Search engine search bars + voice services like Siri and Alexa + Excel formulas + Slack and MS Teams use of IRC-like /commands in the chat window
- dahart 5y ago
  > Sorry but what programmers use is not relevant here. Why do you say that? This article is explicitly talking about programming tools, not mainstream tools. "At Repl.it, where our goal is to build a simple yet powerful programming environment"

slver 5y ago

Sorry but what programmers use is not relevant here. The trick is to bring it to mainstream audience in a way that's not awkward. The closest thing I've seen to mainstream terminal is the JavaScript console in browsers but... that's again for programmers (albeit also casual ones). In professional apps like premiere, the closest thing to a terminal is a search box that's smarter than just looking up words in the documentation. And that is preeeeeeetty shit. We can do better.

mikepurvis 5y ago
Applications like AutoCAD have long had a terminal window where you can perform one-off scripting, introspection of state, and so on. Blender has something similar with a built-in Python REPL: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/python_console.html https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/editors/python_con...
- slver 5y ago
  They do, yeah, good catch there. I gotta say 3D modeling/rendering/animation is pretty intertwined with scripting/programming these days. But I still don't find this very mainstream. It's a bit like the JS console in browsers.
Siira 5y ago
The primary bottleneck is monetization, isn’t it? CLI workflows are predominantly FOSS and free, so no one has much of an incentive to do the streamlining and marketing that mainstream products need. Some of the stuff that is immediately useful to mainstream users: - ncdu - youtube-dl - spotdl - aria2 - Homebrew Casks People aren’t dumb. If these were marketed properly to them, they would use them.
hnlmorg 5y ago
I think there's plenty of examples of command driven text interfaces in popular products. But they're just delivered in a way that either functionality is intentionally limited, or where the order of the commands are interchangeable. For example + Search engine search bars + voice services like Siri and Alexa + Excel formulas + Slack and MS Teams use of IRC-like /commands in the chat window
dahart 5y ago
> Sorry but what programmers use is not relevant here. Why do you say that? This article is explicitly talking about programming tools, not mainstream tools. "At Repl.it, where our goal is to build a simple yet powerful programming environment"