I don't like TUIs. And, having built several, and then having the experience of building meaningfully complex native UI for the first time in my career, I couldn't help noticing how much of the tedious work of putting a TUI together, even with a good framework, is already solved (and solved
well) by the native framework. TUIs force you to implement things native UI developers aren't supposed to fuck with at all. That was radicalizing for me.
So one reason to write this post is just to send a bulletin to developers like me, for whom it wouldn't have even occurred to build native UI before. Native UI is now a thoroughly solved problem. All "off the rack" user interface is solved now.
But that's not the biggest thing happening here.
What's really going to destabilize us is what this says about computer usage and computer programming. When I was a little kid, in the mid-1980s, I imagined all sorts of new different things I could do with a computer, if we ever got one besides the ZX81 clone that plugged into our TV.
I had to grow up to become a computer programmer to learn that one doesn't simply tell a computer to do new things, that there's an elaborate ritual to build anything useful, and it takes years to get comfortable with those rituals. And like most other programmers, and really craftspeople of all stripes, I came to appreciate the rituals and the specialized knowledge. They're part of my identity, so I tend not to question them.
But there's always been this dividing line between computer users and computer programmers. It's rarely disrupted. It happened once with spreadsheets (our profession has a sort of Kubler-Ross thing going on with the fact that Excel formulae are the world's most important programming language), and maybe just a little bit with HTML in the early web. Other than that, we've all been pretty siloed.
That's obviously about to change, in a more significant way than it ever has before. Computers are going to work the way I assumed they did when I was 7. The line between programmer and power user is going to dissolve.
I'm not interested in what that does to our profession or the question of whether or not there will always be a need for serious software craft or engineering or whatnot. Totally valid question, but not where I'm coming from.
I'm interested in what systems look like in this new world we're heading into. What is an operating system in a world where most applications are summoned by the person who's going to use them? What even is an application at that point? What are the interface idioms when we're truly no longer constrained by text inputs to compilers and program building tools? Does everything look more like Smalltalk? Like a Lisp Machine? Or like something weirder? It's gotta be something. It can't possibly be the case that the shape of computing we all count on today is going to survive the next 15 years; it'd be like driving steam-powered automobiles.
That's the fun question.