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Why TUIs are back

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Re: Why TUIs are back

#301

Post by insane_dreamer »

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…

Disagree; TUIs were already gaining steam before that.

I think the main driver was frameworks, available for a range of languages, that make it easy to create nice-looking TUIs (ratatui, textual, ink, etc.)

Re: Why TUIs are back

#302

Post by Gigachad »

skydhash wrote: post #266
Gigachad wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want my applications to look consistent across platforms. Why would I want discord for example to look entirely different between MacOS and Linux? With the current state of things, once I use the app anywhere, I'll know where everything is on any platform.

Take a good look around and check how often people do really change computer platform. And you already have so many things that are different that the "same look" is just an excuse. Gnome, KDE, macOS, Windows does not have the same UX in their file explorer which is a basic utility that everyone has to use. Same with connecting to a WiFi and creating a new user account. So why would you want Discord to be consistent,…

I don't really have any issues working out how to use modern electron apps, they all follow very simple UX patterns, I find them much easier to use than the average native wxWidgets/qt app. Simple, consistent UI is less about the color scheme and border radius being consistent and about things being simple and well laid out on a higher level.

Two apps can have different CSS while being easy to understand because the core flows and ideas are the same. While many older native apps feel like junk draw UI with crap thrown everywhere and weird app specific quirks and patterns. Even if it all does use native inputs and windows.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#303

Post by dlivingston »

tptacek wrote: post #94
dlivingston wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, for small projects. Otherwise, you'd better have a solid plan in place for keeping your business logic in a common core, otherwise you'll just be writing N separate implementations where N = number of target platforms.

Even in a world of agents, less code = better code.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#304

Post by dlivingston »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #267
dlivingston wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really not a solution. You're not targeting the host OS for that, which instantly kills that approach for everything other than "we need this to run on Linux and don't care how." You're shipping all of WINE with it. You're sticking out like a sore thumb with Win32 widgets next to the rest of your GTK apps. Etc etc etc.

how's that any different than electron, it's also sticking out with all of its widgets being different than native

Materially, it's not. Which is what I'm arguing.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#305

Post by qu4z-2 »

tern wrote: post #137
tommy_axle wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Map to "jj" and call it a day since your finger is already on the home row Also ctrl + [ is standard terminal/ascii for esc so that might be a bit more ergonomic than reaching for esc

"jk" is even faster (you get to "roll" your fingers)

And keeps you on the same line unless it was the last one, if you were already in normal mode.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#306

Post by qu4z-2 »

lucasoshiro wrote: post #96
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)

C-c isn't quite the same, alas, but C-[ is. (compare 5itest vs 5itest)

Re: Why TUIs are back

#308

Post by musha68k »

I'm biased towards CLI and reign of LLMs means we're all Unix/text (for) now. So IMO there are many reasons, but chiefly amongst them is UI/HCI design leader Apple throwing out their/industry's interaction design best practices over the last 10+ years.

Embracing constraints and "how it works" used to be at the core of their software ethos.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#309

Post by tptacek »

dragonwriter wrote: post #273
nzoschke wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, the LLM porting things is a game changer. Does it also follow that we can have pretty much any shape for valuable apps? API, CLI, TUI, Web, SwiftUI, WinUI...

LLM reimplementations for parallel versions are going to be fun to maintain, eepecially when AI market maturity ends the era of AI firms subsidizing coding tools as part of their marketshare competition efforts.

If you think it’s all a house of cards, obviously none of my arguments hold. I’m not going to hedge that every time I write anything that intersects with AI though.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#310

Post by justinhj »

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…

It's not really a tui. At least that's not the reason for its success. It's a place where a human can talk to an agent with a common language (human language) and use the computer together in an environment that works for both of us. Text commands and text results.
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