> The question then becomes what can be reasonably done about it? Or rather, can it even be realistically achieved (in an arbitrary time scale that we care abou

> The question then becomes what can be reasonably done about it? Or rather, can it even be realistically achieved (in an arbitrary time scale that we care about), given how much of the culture and tooling is currently centered around passing text from one command to another. Change for something so foundational surely wouldn't be quick. It definitely won't be quick, no. I think the tooling is actually not that big of a problem there; the functionality provided by the 'common tools' generally isn't that complex in scope (at least, in the context of modern development tools), and the many RIIR projects have shown that total do-overs for these sorts of tools are viable. The bigger problem is going to be cultural, and particularly that persistent (but often unspoken) belief that "computers peaked with UNIX in the 70s/80s and what we have now is the best it will ever be". It often results in people actively pushing back on improvements that really wouldn't have any downsides for them at all, thereby creating unnecessary friction. That same 'ideology', for lack of a better word, also makes it very difficult to talk about eg. hybrid terminal/graphical systems - because "GUIs are evil, text is better" and similar sentiments. That really gets in the way of advancing technology here. Ultimately, I think the actual interop and/or reimplementation problems are going to be a walk in the park, compared to dealing with the messy human and cultural/ideological factors involved that actively resist change.