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The GP lists some ways that a terminal-only workflow limits you. >Modern UIs try to go back to the original document UI concept but TOTALLY fails for the inter

by pb7 4y ago

The GP lists some ways that a terminal-only workflow limits you. >Modern UIs try to go back to the original document UI concept but TOTALLY fails for the interactive part, they are mere view where you can touch some knobs someone else placed there for you, nothing more, and try to bend them is a nightmare. I don't see this as a bad thing. I want someone responsible for the product to figure out the best way to use it via a focused set of controls and inputs. Some people fail at this, others are amazing.

kkfx 4y ago
Just a simple example: you probably buy on Amazon and find it's order history webpage simple and nice. Now let's say you want to collect such history in your desktop, link it to the corresponding bank transactions per any order (you have bought many things and they are charged separately on your bank), link to some bought items notes like when the warranty period end in your agenda. What do you need to achieve such result? In CLIs you need a way to query in text all such elements, you are limited by the limited and limiting Amazon WebUI who do not offer anything cat-able, even not anymore a manual *sv export. Not much different is the situation on your bank side where if you are lucky you just get manual ofx/qif export. In a classic CLI world you wold have a remote service who can be queried ssh-in it and locally process the output. In modern Emacs you can do the same in a modern 2D DOCUMENT-BASED GUIs. You just need a bit of math to mach items to bank transactions, nothing more than 20 SLoC. With the WebUI paradigms you need perhaps a WebVM extension with around 5-10k SLoC to achieve something similar...
- pb7 4y ago
  I don’t actually. Amazon is on the “fail” list. It sounds like you want APIs for all of your services. That’s fair. But I don’t think the vast, vast majority of people have use cases as you describe so the ROI on providing something and maintaining it is too low. In any case, in today’s world, you can programmatically scrape the page of the results and crawl further pages if necessary. It wouldn’t be 5-10K lines to output a list of names and prices.

by pb7 4y ago

kkfx 4y ago

Just a simple example: you probably buy on Amazon and find it's order history webpage simple and nice. Now let's say you want to collect such history in your desktop, link it to the corresponding bank transactions per any order (you have bought many things and they are charged separately on your bank), link to some bought items notes like when the warranty period end in your agenda. What do you need to achieve such result? In CLIs you need a way to query in text all such elements, you are limited by the limited and limiting Amazon WebUI who do not offer anything cat-able, even not anymore a manual *sv export. Not much different is the situation on your bank side where if you are lucky you just get manual ofx/qif export. In a classic CLI world you wold have a remote service who can be queried ssh-in it and locally process the output. In modern Emacs you can do the same in a modern 2D DOCUMENT-BASED GUIs. You just need a bit of math to mach items to bank transactions, nothing more than 20 SLoC. With the WebUI paradigms you need perhaps a WebVM extension with around 5-10k SLoC to achieve something similar...

pb7 4y ago
I don’t actually. Amazon is on the “fail” list. It sounds like you want APIs for all of your services. That’s fair. But I don’t think the vast, vast majority of people have use cases as you describe so the ROI on providing something and maintaining it is too low. In any case, in today’s world, you can programmatically scrape the page of the results and crawl further pages if necessary. It wouldn’t be 5-10K lines to output a list of names and prices.