Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why TUIs are back

wiki.alcidesfonseca.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 443 posts

Re: Why TUIs are back

#91

Post by criley2 »

_jackdk_ wrote: post #71
qudat wrote: post #62

I think if you look purely at the numbers, the real reason TUIs are popular is claude code, everything else is background noise compared to it. What originally got me excited to build TUIs was the concept of delivering apps over the wire via SSH. SSH apps resemble a browser in that way: no local installs required. It's a major reason why I enjoy hacking on https://pico.sh -- deploying the TUI requires zero user invol…

I don't think that's true, because it appears to me that the upswing in new TUI programs predates Claude Code's takeoff.

Claude Code uses Ink, a react library in javascript for UI. The upswing is probably stuff like this making it super easy to write a TUI.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#92

Post by gbin »

I don't think it is surprising. Loading entire chrome processes for simple super laggy UIs is just unbearable.

TUI are snappy, accessible over ssh, small screen friendly, easily embeddable in zellij or other multiplexers, easy to copy paste from... Amazing.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#93

Post by james_marks »

dbish wrote: post #10
schmorptron wrote: post #2

I think part of it is also that we're able to still LARP as full developers of complex systems while vibe coding by seeing an interface that makes us look like l33t h4xx0rs even though we're just pressing continue 15 times

I’m relatively certain it’s just this at the end of the day. Everything I see people doing in their custom built TUIs or claude/codex CLI can be done, likely even easier, in a simplified IDE or easier to scan UI, but it feels nice/cool/cyberpunk/work-like to look like you’re doing more. Everyone will have a “reasonable” explanation though for why they have to stay in the terminal even when they aren’t really coding a…

Hot take: TUI’s default to providing utility, GUI’s are prone to extra style/bloat.

Obviously both are capable of the other.

The vanilla HTML styles look bare, so you have do _something_. TUI’s look sort of cool in their simplest form.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#94

Post by tptacek »

dlivingston wrote: post #39
tptacek wrote: post #30

The tide is going to turn on this in the second half of 2026. There have always been nerds who just love TUIs, and still read their email in Mutt. But I think the subtext of this article is right, that TUIs are back because of how much of a pain UI development is. But that's changed drastically in the last few months. I spent the weekend doing SwiftUI stuff with Claude, with a lot of success. It's going to get much e…

That still doesn't address the root of the problem, which is that TUIs and Electron apps are write-once, run-anywhere, while native GUI dev is insanely fragmented. I mean, I guess that's more or less just a summary of the blog post, but it's true. And it will remain true until the fragmentation ends, and the fragmentation won't end until Microsoft gets its act together and ships their version of SwiftUI so that some…

What does it matter how fragmented the platforms are? I feel like this isn't sinking in with people. I was chatting with a friend last night about a SwiftUI app that I'd built and he'd pitched in on. He then reimplemented --- didn't port it, reimplemented it, for WinUI, that night, with just a couple prompts.

I am, in a proverbial sense, buying puts on Electron.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#95

Post by mirekrusin »

servo was recently published on crates – it has potential of becoming new standard; electron model proved to work very well the only downside is monstrous memory usage.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#96

Post by lucasoshiro »

cassepipe wrote: post #37

> The hardcore, moved to vim or emacs, trading immediate feedback and higher usability for the steepest learning curve I’ve seen The only hard part about vim is to be forced to strecth the finger up to Escape for what is essentially the most essential function in a modal editor: Going back to command mode. The ideal workflow is do a quick edit and go back to command ("normal") mode instantly. The fact that Escape is…

> The only hard part about vim is to be forced to strecth the finger up to Escape

I still don't understand why people keep mentioning this, ctrl-c works as well to go back to the normal mode.

> windows you just have to edit (create?) a registry key

Or use Powertoys, which I don't know why it isn't a setting.

(saying as a Mac, Linux and Emacs user, although I still use Vim in the terminal)

Re: Why TUIs are back

#97

Post by polski-g »

AlienRobot wrote: post #76
giancarlostoro wrote: post #32

Because nobody is investing in native UI development. Electron is proof that if there were a simple to use GUI stack that companies would adopt it.

To me the worst case is trying to develop some small utility like a tool to search in files using regex. Because if you are developing something large, the amount of time you spend dealing with packaging, distribution, etc., is small and you don't care about file sizes. But if I want to, say, develop the app for Windows. That is easy. You get a tiny binary to just opens a form and runs with a double click. No install…

I want to say you could statically link a GUI application, but I'm pretty sure libpthread doesn't cooperate on static linking.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#98

Post by polski-g »

MarsIronPI wrote: post #80
allthetime wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go + Lipgloss + Bubbletea is by far the most robust and performant stack for building (and or generating) aesthetic and usable TUIs. Excellent DX. No npm necessary

Is the Go ecosystem really that much better? As an outsider it looks like there's a fair amount of library use, more than I'd like.

Check out the Crush agent harness. It's very impressive.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#99

Post by post-it »

ngruhn wrote: post #60

I think the come back is completely driven by Claude Code. Claude Code is a TUI, Claude Code is successful, therefore let's make everything a TUI! I'm pretty sure the success has nothing to do with the TUI though. I personally enjoy it a lot but the productivity boast doesn't come from avoiding the mouse.

It is driven by Claude Code, not because it's a TUI but because you can paste a bad TUI directly into CC and tell it to intuit what to fix, whereas uploading a screenshot is more cumbersome and less likely to be parsed correctly.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#100

Post by _jackdk_ »

criley2 wrote: post #91
_jackdk_ wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's true, because it appears to me that the upswing in new TUI programs predates Claude Code's takeoff.

Claude Code uses Ink, a react library in javascript for UI. The upswing is probably stuff like this making it super easy to write a TUI.

What a fascinating modern age we live in.
Post reply on HN