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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?

#151

Post by andix »

dardeaup wrote: post #129
andix wrote: post #38

Until recently I helped running an old Clipper/dBase TUI application from the late 80s for a family member. We managed to run it successfully until they retired. vDos (vdos.info) was a huge life saver for this application. It's similar to DOSBox, but more tailored to business applications. The big issue was always to find compatible printers for the old application, vDOS includes some emulation to print to any Window…

What type of business was it? What kind of functionality did this TUI application provide?

It was a customer management and billing system, for a specific industry. Tailored to local requirements and insurance regulations (a lot of things got billed to insurance). There is commercial software available for this purpose, but it's a very small target group, and the products are neither great, nor cheap.

Over time it even got extended to interface with a few external systems, mostly by reading and writing text files to specific locations.

It was deployed on one location with 2-5 concurrent users on the same database. The workflow was something like this: open customer/new customer, read/add notes, register products/services provided, print invoice for customer, print monthly invoice for insurance companies including all the required information (hundreds of pages).

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

#152

Post by dkenyser »

I immediately think of Terminal Coffee[1].

Been experimenting with charmbracelet's[2] stuff recently to do something similar. Still very early stages so nothing to show off yet but would highly recommend it for anyone else looking into creating a TUI app/business.

[1] https://www.terminal.shop/ [2] https://github.com/charmbracelet

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

#153

Post by ponderings »

danhau wrote: post #105
OJFord wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I remember using those pre-cloud versions. I loved them. Sketchup was so intuitive (as a 3D modelling noob) it was ridiculous. My tool of choice for making 3D levels for my various OpenGL projects. I tried to do some rudimentary modelling with modern day Blender and failed. It‘s quite the juggernaut to learn. What software today do people recommend as an alternative to Sketchup? Is the cloud version any good?

I remember running Sketchup for the first time. I had zero experience but in less than 20 minutes I was drawing large complicated machinery, tractors, buildings.

They made a 3d drawing application without a learning curve O_O

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

#154

Post by matthewpick »

berbec wrote: post #22

A client i work for used a Pick system and it's maintained by one dude. He's in his 60s, so who knows how long they'll be able to get support... [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick_operating_system

I should become a maintainer to keep the legacy going…

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

#155

Post by H1Supreme »

I think those old TUI systems are analogous to learning Vim. At first, you don't wtf is going on. But, the more time you spend with it, the more it's ingrained, and eventually becomes second nature.

I've seen many of these systems over the years. Before I moved into software full time, the company I was working for was transitioning from a TUI to a GUI based system. The long time sales and warehousing staff absolutely hated it. Which, yes, is par for the course with any new system. But, I really believe there is an (potential) efficiency to a TUI system that makes it superior to a GUI when dealing with prototypical business operations (order entry, inventory lookup, etc).

Which makes me think, is there a market for "modern" TUI systems?

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

#156

Post by c22 »

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…

Many years ago I used a TUI retail/inventory terminal that was running in an SSH session over a painfully slow wireless link. Each keystroke came with several seconds of latency. This was not a problem, though, since I'd memorized all the important menu sequences. I could just punch in a rapid-fire string of keyboard strokes representing an entire transaction and then just wait a few moments for the screens to catch up and a receipt to print.

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

#157

Post by flomo »

privong wrote: post #59

An interesting theme here in the comments (that I am sympathetic to) is "TUIs have steep learning curves but are fast/efficient for people with proficiency". I wonder if a small part of the modern preference for GUIs is related to a lack of employee retention. If companies aren't necessarily interested in working hard to keep employees then training new hires needs to be faster/easier and that could work against TUI…

What I heard from one large chain is they couldn't train warehouse employees on the green screen (3270) inventory app, its too different for them. They just wouldn't do it or would quit.

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

#158

Post by throw_a_grenade »

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.

How do I implement type-ahead in Qt or GTK application?

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

#160

Post by Gracana »

My employer was running Growthpower (ERP software) on an HP 3000 system up until 2018 or so. We replaced it with a "modern" .NET/MSSQL ERP solution that does a lot more, but it's slow and terrible to navigate compared to the old console menu system, and its database is hundreds of tables without a single foreign key. The frontend application makes a long series of sequential queries to build each view... if you're willing to wade through the muck, you can write a server side query that can do in milliseconds what it does in minutes.
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