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I really do like UIs that dump a lot of structured information instead of telling me a shorter but less informative message "for humans". In many cases, I wish

I really do like UIs that dump a lot of structured information instead of telling me a shorter but less informative message "for humans". In many cases, I wish UIs in general would be more verbose, utilizing bold text and underlined text to emphasize the most important detail, such as "invalid argument...". I may still want to know which thread, i may want to know its address / tid, I may want to know which scope, which file, the context (caller, callee), etc. I fully get that a lot of interfaces could be more human-friendly, but I'm not sure I would, as a developer building tools for other developers, focus on lower information density.

diggan 3y ago
Just like "security vs convenience", UIs are caught in the middle between two forces pulling them in two different directions. In one direction to provide all the information a power user could use, with dense information and everything available at once, and the other direction being only showing what's absolutely necessary in order to not overwhelm beginners/new users. Lately, a lot of the stuff built towards developers have started to slant in the direction of not being made for power users and only exposing the necessary information, as it seems the new "developer tooling startups" have started to take cues from typical startup product design, for better or worse. It seems to me most products today are not considering which of these directions to aim for, so you get some strange amalgamation between the two where neither groups are happy because it's not right to them, and product owners continue to change the UI to try to make everyone happy, not realizing they end up just serving the lowest common denominator.
- safety1st 3y ago
  Two UIs will cost twice as much to design and build, but frankly, we have stdout and stderr today, you just don't see most GUI application developers making use of them. As a developer/power user, if you let me configure your app with a dotfile that I can keep in my git repo, and you spit out useful info via stdout/stderr when I run your app via the terminal... in many use cases I'm happy as a clam to be honest. In fact one reason I tend to gravitate toward open source apps is because they tend to be more likely to do this, what with their users often also being their developers.
- anon373839 3y ago
  > provide all the information a power user could use > not overwhelm beginners/new users This isn’t the right distinction, IMO. I’m decisively a “power user”, but I hate high-density UI for the same reason I don’t leave all my belongings out in the open: it’s cluttered. Clutter can be stressful and tiring.
  - diggan 3y ago
    Yeah, maybe it's not perfect, nor am I saying there aren't exceptions. I guess a good example is Bloomberg Terminal vs whatever investments interface your bank gives you. The latter typically follows the modern design standards of lots of spacing everywhere, using easier to understand terminology and such, while the Bloomberg Terminal is almost straight opposite, cram as much information in as possible, everything available via keyboard shortcuts, industry terms everywhere, favoring quick action and assuming the user mostly knows what they're doing. Both products are built with two different users in mind. I guess the point I was trying to make in the parent comment is that trouble comes when you don't explicitly aim for one of them. Also, clutter/high-density UI isn't the only distinction between the two extremes, also the amount of power the user gets, how many safety features there are, how easy things can be found, how things are explained and more, is also impacted by this.
    - Yizahi 3y ago
      One important thing to remember - there are power user tools which those user prefer to use and like, and there are power user tools which are simply the only option which is available. A good test may be - can you take a power user tool, slightly but meaningfully improve it and then claim a market share with it? In the case of a Bloomberg terminal- you probably can't, because the value proposition is not the UI or keybinds or actions, but the content and the corporate sources and support behind it.
    - anon373839 3y ago
      Yeah, I neglected to mention that there are necessary compromises, and Bloomberg Terminal is a great example. I’m not sure that product could serve its users’ needs without being dense and cluttered.
Sharlin 3y ago
I think people in this discussion are missing the point of the article, which is accessibility, specifically to people using terminals with a screen reader. Visual organization is irrelevant if you can’t see it, and it’s equally irrelevant to the screen reader which just reads aloud all text in the window, expecting something approaching prose rather than {[]}# mess. Sadly I don’t think many authors of CLI software even consider that someone might use their programs with a screen reader, and I don’t think the converse is likely either.
hliyan 3y ago
On a related note, I wish more ecommerce apps would do english text dumps, rather than fancy 2 dimensional multi-coloured UIs where I need to remember where the date, order number, etc. are. E.g. You ordered a Pepperoni Pizza from Pizza Place for $14.99. Joseph has picked it up. It is due to arrive at your Home (5th Street) at 7.45pm. [Call] or [Message] Joseph. Instead, I get Mission Control.

diggan 3y ago

Just like "security vs convenience", UIs are caught in the middle between two forces pulling them in two different directions. In one direction to provide all the information a power user could use, with dense information and everything available at once, and the other direction being only showing what's absolutely necessary in order to not overwhelm beginners/new users. Lately, a lot of the stuff built towards developers have started to slant in the direction of not being made for power users and only exposing the necessary information, as it seems the new "developer tooling startups" have started to take cues from typical startup product design, for better or worse. It seems to me most products today are not considering which of these directions to aim for, so you get some strange amalgamation between the two where neither groups are happy because it's not right to them, and product owners continue to change the UI to try to make everyone happy, not realizing they end up just serving the lowest common denominator.

safety1st 3y ago
Two UIs will cost twice as much to design and build, but frankly, we have stdout and stderr today, you just don't see most GUI application developers making use of them. As a developer/power user, if you let me configure your app with a dotfile that I can keep in my git repo, and you spit out useful info via stdout/stderr when I run your app via the terminal... in many use cases I'm happy as a clam to be honest. In fact one reason I tend to gravitate toward open source apps is because they tend to be more likely to do this, what with their users often also being their developers.
anon373839 3y ago
> provide all the information a power user could use > not overwhelm beginners/new users This isn’t the right distinction, IMO. I’m decisively a “power user”, but I hate high-density UI for the same reason I don’t leave all my belongings out in the open: it’s cluttered. Clutter can be stressful and tiring.
- diggan 3y ago
  Yeah, maybe it's not perfect, nor am I saying there aren't exceptions. I guess a good example is Bloomberg Terminal vs whatever investments interface your bank gives you. The latter typically follows the modern design standards of lots of spacing everywhere, using easier to understand terminology and such, while the Bloomberg Terminal is almost straight opposite, cram as much information in as possible, everything available via keyboard shortcuts, industry terms everywhere, favoring quick action and assuming the user mostly knows what they're doing. Both products are built with two different users in mind. I guess the point I was trying to make in the parent comment is that trouble comes when you don't explicitly aim for one of them. Also, clutter/high-density UI isn't the only distinction between the two extremes, also the amount of power the user gets, how many safety features there are, how easy things can be found, how things are explained and more, is also impacted by this.
  - Yizahi 3y ago
    One important thing to remember - there are power user tools which those user prefer to use and like, and there are power user tools which are simply the only option which is available. A good test may be - can you take a power user tool, slightly but meaningfully improve it and then claim a market share with it? In the case of a Bloomberg terminal- you probably can't, because the value proposition is not the UI or keybinds or actions, but the content and the corporate sources and support behind it.
  - anon373839 3y ago
    Yeah, I neglected to mention that there are necessary compromises, and Bloomberg Terminal is a great example. I’m not sure that product could serve its users’ needs without being dense and cluttered.

Sharlin 3y ago

I think people in this discussion are missing the point of the article, which is accessibility, specifically to people using terminals with a screen reader. Visual organization is irrelevant if you can’t see it, and it’s equally irrelevant to the screen reader which just reads aloud all text in the window, expecting something approaching prose rather than {[]}# mess. Sadly I don’t think many authors of CLI software even consider that someone might use their programs with a screen reader, and I don’t think the converse is likely either.

hliyan 3y ago

On a related note, I wish more ecommerce apps would do english text dumps, rather than fancy 2 dimensional multi-coloured UIs where I need to remember where the date, order number, etc. are. E.g. You ordered a Pepperoni Pizza from Pizza Place for $14.99. Joseph has picked it up. It is due to arrive at your Home (5th Street) at 7.45pm. [Call] or [Message] Joseph. Instead, I get Mission Control.