4 ms·

Can't each and every one of these criticisms be also leveled at CLIs? Don't we like CLIs? I notice I am confused. > The least it could do is intelligently give

by ctoth 4y ago

Can't each and every one of these criticisms be also leveled at CLIs? Don't we like CLIs? I notice I am confused. > The least it could do is intelligently give me a starting point for typing in a prompt. The tyranny of the blank textbox is real. Seems LLMs would be way better at this sort of thing -- What can I do here, instead of "do I type help? man? apropos?"

hulitu 4y ago
> Can't each and every one of these criticisms be also leveled at CLIs? Don't we like CLIs? I notice I am confused. It is not about text. In CLIs you have a set of commands. In those interfaces you have some hidden commands which you must trigger with keywords.
- hinkley 4y ago
  Node and npm are notorious for having command line flags almost none of which are listed in the help, and less than half of which are documented on the website. I'm running node and npm flags in production deployment pipelines right now that I found on Stack Overflow or the bug database and exist nowhere on the official websites. And if you look at the historic documentation, the current situation is a factor of 3 improvement over even Node 10 or 12 era, which is far better than the node < 1.0 period What you say is true of good CLIs, not tire fires like Node.js. So you're both right depending on context.
  - b5n 4y ago
    I'm not sure how much time you spent on SO, but this only took me a couple of minutes of digging and I don't work with node. git clone https://github.com/nodejs/node.git grep -E -A 1 -R "Add(Option|Alias)" node/src/node_options.cc There may be options I've missed because I haven't dedicated more than a couple minutes to it, but I think this demonstrates a straightforward approach to diving a little deeper when necessary and should be easy to adjust/build upon depending on your case. Your gripe regarding documentation is legitimate, but if you're an engineer responsible for deployments who needs to go past typical usage consulting the source should be in your bag of tricks. Having a deeper understanding of the tools you use and rely on isn't going to hurt you or your career. https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/Undocumented.html https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/Undocumen...
    - hinkley 4y ago
      How about you figure out that over ten million people are using your code and act like it? https://xkcd.com/1205/ https://xkcd.com/1205/ I'm surrounded by people, internal and external to the team, who believe that their code is entitled to a larger fraction of my time and attention than everyone else's. I write my own code like nobody gives as much of a shit about it as I do. Because it's true. They don't. Sometimes even I can't be bothered. I just wish it worked already. I've got almost 1500 dependencies (counting directories, not the npm report which is overestimating by 15%) and 500 dev dependencies. That's a little higher than it should be but a lot lower than it was. We work about 2087 hours a year. I'd be lucky to get 1750 hours after meetings and administravia. If I spent fifty minutes a year thinking about each module then I don't get any work done. Five minutes would chew up 10% of my available time. You are not entitled to my time or energy. I've got other shit to do. This thread isn't about node, that's just an example. It's about UI, which we write for non-technical people. There is no reading the source. It's not an option, which means your response is whataboutism. Your tool, your code, your gadget, your car, these are not who I am or what I'm about. If we're even talking about the UI, it means that your device is standing between me/him/her/them/us and what we are about. You've become an impediment not a contributor to people getting back to doing their thing. Apologism is just intellectual laziness. I love Apple products but everyone involved with, "You're holding it wrong" can fuck right off. That's stroking your own ego and you can do that in your room with the door closed. Don't expect us to help.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        hinkley 4y ago
        > It is not about text. In CLIs you have a set of commands. In those interfaces you have some hidden commands which you must trigger with keywords. That's the context. You're getting lost in the weeds. You're also using an argument that's been around since a time when people had 50 dependencies. It might have made sense then, it doesn't make sense and order of magnitude and change later. >> I write my own code like nobody gives as much of a shit about it as I do. Because it's true.
Pxtl 4y ago
While the discoverability of magic-word linguistic interfaces and command-lines do have some commonalities, my keyboard has never failed because it couldn't understand my accent.
- hunter2_ 4y ago
  If we're comparing CLIs with text chat bots, accents affect neither. I don't think the concept of NLP generally implies voice more than text, and TFA specifically discusses textboxes.
hunter2_ 4y ago
I agree very much, but CLIs are mostly for power users and developers these days. Normal users were on CLIs decades ago but have been primarily on GUIs since then, for essentially the same reasons that TFA argues. I think we can focus on normal users for the purpose of this discussion.
marcosdumay 4y ago
Hum... If your CLI doesn't have a manual, yes, that applies.
__MatrixMan__ 4y ago
We expect interactive help in a CLI, and tab completion. We expect errors that tell us what we've done wrong. These things quickly expose the underlying "shape" of the interface. When chatting with an AI, you don't know that the bot was 41% sure that this was the right path for you, chosen out of five other options with lower scores. It just takes you where it thinks you want to go without sharing that structural information with you.
simplyluke 4y ago
I think this is why chatgpt has done so well with engineers. Engineers like command lines. The vast, vast majority of users of computers however don’t like command lines. The same thing happened in ~2016 with a flash in the pan of chat bot startups which mostly failed. Building a command line in messenger/slack was cool to engineers but not a super viable business. ChatGPT is a proof of concept of a transformative technology, but it’s not what the product will look like that gets mass adoption.

by ctoth 4y ago

hulitu 4y ago

> Can't each and every one of these criticisms be also leveled at CLIs? Don't we like CLIs? I notice I am confused. It is not about text. In CLIs you have a set of commands. In those interfaces you have some hidden commands which you must trigger with keywords.

hinkley 4y ago
Node and npm are notorious for having command line flags almost none of which are listed in the help, and less than half of which are documented on the website. I'm running node and npm flags in production deployment pipelines right now that I found on Stack Overflow or the bug database and exist nowhere on the official websites. And if you look at the historic documentation, the current situation is a factor of 3 improvement over even Node 10 or 12 era, which is far better than the node < 1.0 period What you say is true of good CLIs, not tire fires like Node.js. So you're both right depending on context.
- b5n 4y ago
  I'm not sure how much time you spent on SO, but this only took me a couple of minutes of digging and I don't work with node. git clone https://github.com/nodejs/node.git grep -E -A 1 -R "Add(Option|Alias)" node/src/node_options.cc There may be options I've missed because I haven't dedicated more than a couple minutes to it, but I think this demonstrates a straightforward approach to diving a little deeper when necessary and should be easy to adjust/build upon depending on your case. Your gripe regarding documentation is legitimate, but if you're an engineer responsible for deployments who needs to go past typical usage consulting the source should be in your bag of tricks. Having a deeper understanding of the tools you use and rely on isn't going to hurt you or your career. https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/Undocumented.html https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/html_node/Undocumen...
  - hinkley 4y ago
    How about you figure out that over ten million people are using your code and act like it? https://xkcd.com/1205/ https://xkcd.com/1205/ I'm surrounded by people, internal and external to the team, who believe that their code is entitled to a larger fraction of my time and attention than everyone else's. I write my own code like nobody gives as much of a shit about it as I do. Because it's true. They don't. Sometimes even I can't be bothered. I just wish it worked already. I've got almost 1500 dependencies (counting directories, not the npm report which is overestimating by 15%) and 500 dev dependencies. That's a little higher than it should be but a lot lower than it was. We work about 2087 hours a year. I'd be lucky to get 1750 hours after meetings and administravia. If I spent fifty minutes a year thinking about each module then I don't get any work done. Five minutes would chew up 10% of my available time. You are not entitled to my time or energy. I've got other shit to do. This thread isn't about node, that's just an example. It's about UI, which we write for non-technical people. There is no reading the source. It's not an option, which means your response is whataboutism. Your tool, your code, your gadget, your car, these are not who I am or what I'm about. If we're even talking about the UI, it means that your device is standing between me/him/her/them/us and what we are about. You've become an impediment not a contributor to people getting back to doing their thing. Apologism is just intellectual laziness. I love Apple products but everyone involved with, "You're holding it wrong" can fuck right off. That's stroking your own ego and you can do that in your room with the door closed. Don't expect us to help.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
      - hinkley 4y ago
        > It is not about text. In CLIs you have a set of commands. In those interfaces you have some hidden commands which you must trigger with keywords. That's the context. You're getting lost in the weeds. You're also using an argument that's been around since a time when people had 50 dependencies. It might have made sense then, it doesn't make sense and order of magnitude and change later. >> I write my own code like nobody gives as much of a shit about it as I do. Because it's true.

Pxtl 4y ago

While the discoverability of magic-word linguistic interfaces and command-lines do have some commonalities, my keyboard has never failed because it couldn't understand my accent.

hunter2_ 4y ago
If we're comparing CLIs with text chat bots, accents affect neither. I don't think the concept of NLP generally implies voice more than text, and TFA specifically discusses textboxes.

hunter2_ 4y ago

I agree very much, but CLIs are mostly for power users and developers these days. Normal users were on CLIs decades ago but have been primarily on GUIs since then, for essentially the same reasons that TFA argues. I think we can focus on normal users for the purpose of this discussion.

marcosdumay 4y ago

Hum... If your CLI doesn't have a manual, yes, that applies.

__MatrixMan__ 4y ago

We expect interactive help in a CLI, and tab completion. We expect errors that tell us what we've done wrong. These things quickly expose the underlying "shape" of the interface. When chatting with an AI, you don't know that the bot was 41% sure that this was the right path for you, chosen out of five other options with lower scores. It just takes you where it thinks you want to go without sharing that structural information with you.

simplyluke 4y ago

I think this is why chatgpt has done so well with engineers. Engineers like command lines. The vast, vast majority of users of computers however don’t like command lines. The same thing happened in ~2016 with a flash in the pan of chat bot startups which mostly failed. Building a command line in messenger/slack was cool to engineers but not a super viable business. ChatGPT is a proof of concept of a transformative technology, but it’s not what the product will look like that gets mass adoption.