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Ask HN: My family business runs on a 1993-era text-based-UI (TUI). Anybody else?

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Re: Ask HN: My family business runs on a 1993-era text-based-UI (TUI). Anybody else?

#141

Post by jtbayly »

galaxy_gas wrote: post #81
trbleclef wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just the fact that you can use the keyboard is brilliant. I teach high school and most of my computing tasks are in lowest-bidder web GUI messes (lousy UX, no hotkeys) and take so much longer than a keyboard interface would. Even taking roll takes a minute or two longer than it used to.

I teach at a summer camp once that had custom web app for roll such that it displayed one name at a time to call out and to mark it as present you had to type their given name in a box, otherwise click next with empty input for absent

Somebody needs to be fired for that sort of UI...

I've probably made that sort of UI without realizing it...

Re: Ask HN: My family business runs on a 1993-era text-based-UI (TUI). Anybody else?

#142

Post by RaftPeople »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #66

Costco. Go to a supervisor in a red vest and ask what other Costco has the item that has stocked out and you'll see. No idea what the backend is but the app they use is a terminal emulator that looks straight out of the late 80's.

It's a network of high end as400's, the software is custom.

They've burned multiple 100's of millions of dollars on multiple projects trying to re-develop and move off as400's, but they just pulled the plug on their most recent project a year or two ago.

The biggest issue with adoption on new system (based on insiders I've talked to) is that the existing system is very efficient for people knowledgeable about how to use it and the newer GUI based systems just don't match it.

Re: Ask HN: My family business runs on a 1993-era text-based-UI (TUI). Anybody else?

#143

Post by kaeland »

OJFord wrote: post #99
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #94

No, but I learned yesterday that a carpenter and renovation person I know uses a GUI software from 1996 called "FloorPlan Plus 3D 3.01" [1] to design furniture before he builds it. He has a dusty old laptop running Windows XP on which the only thing that works is this software and the connection to the printer. He showed me his workflow in detail. It's a beautiful software that does everything he needs. And notice it…

Loads of woodworking is done on SketchUp version whatever that's pre-cloud licensing, dating from 2008 I believe. (Cloud aversion , if you will.) Picasa & Earth era desktop Google software.

Loved using Google Sketchup back in the day! My high school engineering teacher would show off his 3D modeling of cars during class. It was so cool seeing what you could do with that software!

Re: Ask HN: My family business runs on a 1993-era text-based-UI (TUI). Anybody else?

#144

Post by gruntledfangler »

I’ve worked at many bars and restaurants. The best ordering interface I ever used was at Pizza Hut circa 1999. It was a monochrome TUI (orange). It was ancient-looking even then.

The speed was incredible once you got proficient. Once you got the muscle memory down you could punch in any single pizza order in less than a second. Even something complicated like different toppings on the halves was NBD. Pizza Hut was always coming up with these ridiculous gimmicks and the system could accommodate them seamlessly. Just incredible.

This system probably quietly saved the company millions in its time.

Re: Ask HN: My family business runs on a 1993-era text-based-UI (TUI). Anybody else?

#145

Post by pplante »

I watched Alien: Earth recently and was admiring the TUIs everywhere. The show takes place in 2120 and they kept up the aesthetics of the original movies. A future full of synthetic humanoids and interstellar ships kept the TUI. I do not remember tablets being in the series, however even those seem to use a similar TUI.

I look forward to my great grandchildren rediscovering the TUI.

Re: Ask HN: My family business runs on a 1993-era text-based-UI (TUI). Anybody else?

#146

Post by VBprogrammer »

When I worked at State Street everything was done in IBM/370 terminal emulators and a COM component which made is easy to scrape information into Excel. I wasn't really supposed to know about that but found enough code examples which weren't password protected that I could figure it out.

Re: Ask HN: My family business runs on a 1993-era text-based-UI (TUI). Anybody else?

#147

Post by RaftPeople »

jamal-kumar wrote: post #87
CodeWriter23 wrote: post #66

Costco. Go to a supervisor in a red vest and ask what other Costco has the item that has stocked out and you'll see. No idea what the backend is but the app they use is a terminal emulator that looks straight out of the late 80's.

Here's a photo for anyone curious: https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/111839478303640635 It's also worth noting that the original mainframe hardware has likely been virtualized at this point. Used to work for a company that was doing a lot of that around 15 years ago

> that the original mainframe hardware has likely been virtualized at this point

The as400 is a mini-computer, the high end of this line overlaps the low end of mainframe.

When I did some consulting work out there many years ago, they had a network of the largest as400's that IBM makes, connected together in one image.

Regarding virtualization: It would have to be on IBM's power processors. IBM does offer cloud services running as400, I have no info on whether Costco is using that or not.

Re: Ask HN: My family business runs on a 1993-era text-based-UI (TUI). Anybody else?

#148

Post by dartharva »

bdavisx wrote: post #45
arichard123 wrote: post #14

I remember using a TUI for a Bank in the UK, and them switching to a web-based javascript system. Because the TUI forced keyboard interaction everyone was quick, and we could all fly through the screens finding what we wanted. One benefit was each screen was a fixed size and there was no scroll, so when you pressed the right incantation the answer you wanted appeared in the same portion of the screen every time. You…

A GUI can be as effective as a TUI if it's designed to be 100% usable from a keyboard - the problem is very few applications take the time to do that design.

A large fraction of the entire point of a GUI is not being keyboard-centric.

Re: Ask HN: My family business runs on a 1993-era text-based-UI (TUI). Anybody else?

#149

Post by Sander_Marechal »

ilaksh wrote: post #140
estimator7292 wrote: post #20

Many (most?) older retail businesses still use TUIs. They're reliable, consistent, and orders of magnitude faster than GUI systems. When I worked ar Sherwin Williams, I got good enough with the TUI that customers could rattle off their orders while I punch it into the computer in real time. It's absolutely crazy that a well designed TUI is so much faster. It turns out that if you never change the UI and every menu it…

You're right to point out the speed, but it is just not true that GUIs can't be fast. You can have screens that load quickly and shortcut keys etc. You just have to make fast navigation and data entry a high priority. The assumptions and approaches people make today mean that generally isn't the case. With a TUI there is a hard limit on the amount of data you can load and that helps as a starting point. - Often it's…

At work we recently moved from Jira to Linear. It it fully keyboard navigatable and has shortcuts for pretty much everything. It's great! For me the only downside is that al that keyboard greatness clashes with my Vimium browser extension. Oh well...

Re: Ask HN: My family business runs on a 1993-era text-based-UI (TUI). Anybody else?

#150

Post by LTL_FTC »

I worked as a sales consultant for AT&T wireless, back during the smartphone boom, at their retail stores. During onboarding everyone was taught how to use the GUI for everything (OPUS, I believe it was called): creating accounts, upgrading accounts, etc. But I noticed a few of the senior reps lived in the TUI (Telegence) and wondered why. When asked they claimed they were just used to it, but I quickly learned how much faster it was by observing them. They were able to process customers so much more quickly, a comparative advantage in commissioned-based sales.

My buddy and I requested access and learned how to use it. Not only did it streamline our process, it allowed us to do everything, where the GUI often omitted certain tasks forcing us reps to call customer service (for example, providing customers with credits after fixing their accounts).

So we lived with both the GUI up for when management walked by and relied on the TUI when we needed/wanted to work quickly.

I bet the system hasn't changed a bit. But I still live in the terminal quite a bit these days.

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