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Good Tools Are Invisible

gingerbill.org

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Re: Good Tools Are Invisible

#251

Post by oasisaimlessly »

iLemming wrote: post #206
ventana wrote: post #11

As a long time terminal user, it does not surprise me much when people just don't get it . The discussion often goes like this: — In a terminal, I can do so-and-so with a simple command — Well, in my FrobnicatorStudio, there's a shortcut Ctrl+Alt+So for that and this can go forever, going into pretty much useless comparisons like "in vim, I can delete 24 lines by pressing four keys" (no Sublime user ever needs that)…

Most programmers come to appreciate a single fundamental truth about their field way too late into their careers. That the most basic foundational unit, the substrate they need to conquer is text. Everything stems from it. We have to deal with text our entire lives. It doesn't matter where that text appears - in web browsers, in Jira, in Slack, terminal, in PDFs, Word or LaTeX documents. Code is just structured text.…

preach, brotha

Re: Good Tools Are Invisible

#253

Post by lionkor »

dtj1123 wrote: post #236
lionkor wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TUI and CLI isn't the same thing. A badly written TUI will fail to check isatty() on stdin and will dump ANSI escape codes, which are not trivial to remove from the output as they follow a format that has different formats, lengths and sentinels that denote the ending.

I'm fully aware they're not the same thing, I'll not sure what gave you the impression I think they are. I agree that a badly written TUI is... badly written? Obviously I'm referring to well executed TUIs. For example, I regularly pipe the result of ls, grep or fd into Helix then use multicursor editing to set up a script. You simply can't do that with a GUI.

Those are not TUIs, or rather, when we say TUI we usually mean interactive UI in the terminal.

Re: Good Tools Are Invisible

#256

Post by zahlman »

jt2190 wrote: post #116
bensyverson wrote: post #74

The effect of the interface becoming "invisible" is actually a function of time spent in the interface. I think what the author is reacting to is discretionary friction; designers or product folks adding features or complexity. The thing is, that friction may be necessary in order to achieve a certain task (think about resolving a merge conflict). And given enough time in the interface, even those "disruptive" steps…

> … discretionary friction ; designers or product folks adding features or complexity. This is far more precise. The article talks about this from the users side, how there is a class of user who enjoys learning all of these “extra” features, even though they ultimately provide less value than the core features. >> If people find vim, emacs, or whatever genuinely good and productive, I’m not going to criticize them f…

> a class of user who enjoys learning all of these “extra” features, even though they ultimately provide less value than the core features.

I don't think this was actually established. The author may have a point about the UX of multiple cursors in Sublime, but comparing that to Vim macros is missing the point of the macro system — i.e. that you can create something that persists between editing sessions, and encapsulate a sequence of steps even of fundamentally different kinds. (For example, do multiple cursors allow you to implement a new command to transpose elements of a comma-separated list?) More importantly, though, this is not addressing the general principle about "extra features".

I haven't known other Vim users to speak of such "games".

Re: Good Tools Are Invisible

#257

Post by rwbt »

thunderbong wrote: post #54

Great article. Every time there's a post here on git and I read the comments, I keep thinking of all the years I've used fossil and how it's been completely invisible, in the background, letting me get ahead with my work.

I thought about Fossil too, once I read the article. I don't even know what version I'm on and never even think about it.

Re: Good Tools Are Invisible

#258

Post by zahlman »

overgard wrote: post #128
ventana wrote: post #11

As a long time terminal user, it does not surprise me much when people just don't get it . The discussion often goes like this: — In a terminal, I can do so-and-so with a simple command — Well, in my FrobnicatorStudio, there's a shortcut Ctrl+Alt+So for that and this can go forever, going into pretty much useless comparisons like "in vim, I can delete 24 lines by pressing four keys" (no Sublime user ever needs that)…

I don't think your logic is off, but I also think that the FrobnosticatorStudio people have a point. The thing is, yes, the terminal gives you infinitely more capabilities but you probably have like, 20 actual things you do regularly? The learning curve makes it a hard sell when those 20 things are probably all you need. Like, sometimes I'll do something like this if I'm in a terminal and I want to find a build scrip…

> I prefer tools that understand the structure of my project instead of just treating it like text

... but in the example you gave, did you not just have it pull up the text contents of a file in a window, and search through it (visually) as text? And on the command line, did you not invoke `jq` specifically to parse the JSON file as JSON?

And really, there is no reason that a TUI pager can't have progressive search that highlights matches. For that matter, vim actually does it. On the other hand, if you're just trying to jump forward to a named unique section, then the appropriate comparison is

> less packages.json -> /scr

Sure, `less` is more keystrokes than ctrl-p. But you're doing it in a much more general environment (it has to select from every program on your path), so of course it is.

Re: Good Tools Are Invisible

#259

Post by zahlman »

fmbb wrote: post #231
pianopatrick wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should not underestimate how confusing those CLI tools are to people who have never used them before. For example, I would argue that for someone with no experience, figuring out how to copy a file from one folder to another is easier in Windows Explorer than learning how to use cp.

> For example, I would argue that for someone with no experience, figuring out how to copy a file from one folder to another is easier in Windows Explorer than learning how to use cp. I don't believe this. If you find a person (well, two I guess for this experiment) with no computer experience and want to teach them how to copy files, your first step will be teaching them what is a file and how they are organized in…

> The CLI is also infinitely easier to help newbies use over the phone!

I vaguely recall a scene from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_the_Boss%3F about this. "Click on the icon that says 'Word'..."

Re: Good Tools Are Invisible

#260

Post by alexkh »

I live with default wallpaper and default melody on my phone, so yep, having good defaults is fine. But in some huge products, you usually less then 10% features (and everyone is using different 10%), so it's nice to have ability to tweak things and make you need around.
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