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Why TUIs are back

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Re: Why TUIs are back

#281

Post by nzoschke »

colesantiago wrote: post #274
tptacek wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I read a comment like this, I flash to the episode of the Office where Michael steals one of Dwight's clients while Dwight is on the phone with him in the car. He pitches the client, and Dwight screams into his phone "ARE YOU SAYING YOU INVENTED PAPER?!" No, friend-o, I'm not saying htop and emacs are show-off projects --- though everyone I know who uses Emacs (myself included) uses graphical emacs. My poi…

> I'm not saying htop and emacs are show-off projects... > TUIs are show-off projects most of the time. Your statement and anecdotes means nothing and are meaningless since you provided 0 examples of the preported "show off" TUI projects. Maybe you should re-read what you said again before backpedalling after I gave solid counter examples and you provided none.

The screenshot in the post demonstrates show-off TUIs.

That git TUI doesn't offer anything over `git` CLI.

The network / battery / performance TUI is redundant with the tools in the window menu bar.

I love the aesthetic of TUIs but their actual day-to-day install base and usage must pale in comparison to CLIs and GUIs.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#282

Post by rmunn »

moomin wrote: post #83

Using Claude has highlighted, for me, a number of issues with terminal apps like Claude Code. You can’t easily see the status of lots of instances, you can’t easily search for instances, you can’t get one instance to start another instance or send a message from one instance to another and, of course, if you make a slightly mistake in coding a full screen app, you get screen corruption.

> if you make a slightly mistake in coding a full screen app, you get screen corruption.

HOW? The TUI library should handle everything for you. So HOW do... Wait. Did Claude vibe-code up its own set of TUI routines instead of using a library?

Re: Why TUIs are back

#283

Post by dominotw »

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

lol most depressing comment of the day

Re: Why TUIs are back

#284

Post by colesantiago »

akerl_ wrote: post #279
colesantiago wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems pretty clear that saying most TUI projects are show-off projects does not mean all TUI projects are show-off projects. Which ones are show off projects? Examples? Be objective.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=fal... That's a good start.

Let's check the first one:

Systemd-manager-TUI: A TUI application for managing systemd services

Somebody said that they use this, so it is not a 'show off' project.

You realise you made a silly sweeping generalisation right? People actually use them.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#286

Post by colesantiago »

nzoschke wrote: post #281
colesantiago wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not saying htop and emacs are show-off projects... > TUIs are show-off projects most of the time. Your statement and anecdotes means nothing and are meaningless since you provided 0 examples of the preported "show off" TUI projects. Maybe you should re-read what you said again before backpedalling after I gave solid counter examples and you provided none.

The screenshot in the post demonstrates show-off TUIs. That git TUI doesn't offer anything over `git` CLI. The network / battery / performance TUI is redundant with the tools in the window menu bar. I love the aesthetic of TUIs but their actual day-to-day install base and usage must pale in comparison to CLIs and GUIs.

The whole point of a TUI is that it is faster than typing hundreds of commands and options you're likely to forget and made a mistake on.

That is not 'showing off'.

And you providing anecdotes based on a single blog post doesn't change that.

TUIs are not for everyone sure, but they also save developers a lot of time typing and using a mouse.

I don't even like TUIs and this is obvious.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#287

Post by MarsIronPI »

polski-g wrote: post #98
MarsIronPI wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Impressively many dependencies? I estimate about 75-125 in the dependency tree, including multiple versions of the same package. Now compare to something written in e.g. C: such a program might have 2 dependencies: libcurl and ncurses.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#288

Post by akerl_ »

colesantiago wrote: post #284
akerl_ wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=fal... That's a good start.

Let's check the first one: Systemd-manager-TUI: A TUI application for managing systemd services Somebody said that they use this, so it is not a 'show off' project. You realise you made a silly sweeping generalisation right? People actually use them.

I don't know why you're so aggressively attacking the idea of people making projects to show off.

The claim isn't that zero people use them, or that all TUI projects are made to show off. But most of the TUIs you see land on HN are things somebody made to play around with a technology / scratch a momentary itch.

No shade on those people; making a project that brings the author joy is an awesome reason to make something, and sharing it with folks here is one of the better things about this site. But the TUIs you see here are, by and large, not aiming for (and not going to get) broad adoption.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#289

Post by MarsIronPI »

wpm wrote: post #211
MarsIronPI wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i think the spacebar doesn't need to be so big, there's no reason for it to be available to both thumbs This is why I love JIS, even though I don't actually need the Japanese keys. That small spacebar is so much better, and you get three extra keys (Henkan, Muhenkan and Kana) along the bottom row. As an Emacs user, I bind Henkan and Muhenkan to be Control keys. It's very comfortable.

I was just thinking this today tweaking the layout on my lilypad58, a layout I don't love and kept arriving at, "I just want more modifiers". Using JIS is genius.

My JIS bottom row is currently:

I have left Control mapped to Meta, {,Mu}Henkan mapped to Control, Kana to right Alt, right Alt to Super, Menu to Compose/Meta (tap/hold) and right Control mapped to Greek.

I use keymapper[0] to do low-level remapping and tap/hold, and a custom XKB layout for the Greek modifier. I highly recommend this setup.

[0]: https://github.com/houmain/keymapper

Re: Why TUIs are back

#290

Post by tiffanyh »

CLI

Dumb question and slightly off topic, but is there a reason why so many AI tools are CLIs … as opposed to just an API or another interface?

I feel like I’m missing the obvious in why there feels like an explosion of CLI tools lately, related to AI.

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