I wonder if devs are flocking to TUIs to gatekeep against normies building apps
Stop Making TUIs
321–330 of 579 posts
Re: Stop Making TUIs
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you're comparing is really "keyboard-driven" via "mouse-drive". A GUI can be keyboard-driven and as fast as a TUI. The sad truth is that the status quo for GUIs is absolutely terrible, and most were rushed out and not properly tested to check if they're really usable without a mouse.
> The sad truth is that the status quo for GUIs is absolutely terrible, and most were rushed out and not properly tested to check if they're really usable without a mouse. This is the key point. No platform UI paradigm focuses on keyboard navigability and speed, all focus on mouse and visual effects for discoverability in a pursuit to dumb down the user experience enough to make it usable for everyone, breaking power…
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Re: Stop Making TUIs
#323Sorry, no. I don't want to forward a whole desktop environment just because I want to use a small application I have written for myself. TUIs are much more portable, easier on eyes, can be information dense, and resistant to lassiez-faire UI library changes on platforms. They don't need GPUs to render, megabytes of RAM to run, great amounts of bandwidth to access from afar. I'll write a library for the functionality,…
> They don't need GPUs to render, megabytes of RAM to run
They do these days, because you still need a terminal emulator and those are then basically GUIs in themselves. Ain't the 80s anymore :^)
Re: Stop Making TUIs
#324In the age of graphical user interfaces, direct manipulation, info visualization, WebGPU in the browser, and frontier AI, it seems ridiculous to have a VT100 escape code interpreter between you and your LLM.
Like Brooke Shields, I'd rather nothing comes between me and my LLMs.
Re: Stop Making TUIs
#325Sorry, no. I don't want to forward a whole desktop environment just because I want to use a small application I have written for myself. TUIs are much more portable, easier on eyes, can be information dense, and resistant to lassiez-faire UI library changes on platforms. They don't need GPUs to render, megabytes of RAM to run, great amounts of bandwidth to access from afar. I'll write a library for the functionality,…
> They don't need GPUs to render, megabytes of RAM to run They do these days, because you still need a terminal emulator and those are then basically GUIs in themselves. Ain't the 80s anymore :^)
I still have quite a few systems which doesn't have a GUI attached to it, and I access them via a pure console.
Most, if not all these systems have Matrox G200 or similar low end 2D integrated graphics which are just there to see the text during boot, nothing else. I sometimes SSH from these systems to my own systems to use TUI or CLI tools.
If I want to go a step further. We have a couple of real VT320s.
Working at a datacenter has it perks, it seems. :^)
Re: Stop Making TUIs
#326I think I'll keep making TUIs but thanks.
Easier to test too. Try testing your beautiful claude design React app end to end
Re: Stop Making TUIs
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
> To get a good terminal UX, I think the answer to this is probably to throw all that compatibility mess away and redesign a modern terminal protocol that bakes in accessibility, regions, scrolling, selection, proper keyboard, etc. Why not just… a GUI framework or layout that’s meant to be keyboard driven and information dense?
Agreed. This is exactly what I want, ideally with components and libraries and panels and data shareable and extendable between applications. The closest in spirit is Probably something like Dear ImGui[0] and the ecosystem of components and apps built with it, but it's not quite there for me. Something is missing. [0] https://github.com/ocornut/imgui
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Re: Stop Making TUIs
#328Just like MCP is for Desktop users and useless otherwise -- GUIs are a solution to a created problem.. of users not being able to read and write very well because they don't practice.
Terminal, coding, and even prompt writing skills are language skills.
If you cannot use a terminal properly you are basically an appliance user. Like a toaster operator.
TUIs are not for everyone by design.
Re: Stop Making TUIs
#329From tui i can copy (all) text and run it over ssh, only a good image protocol is missing for me
Re: Stop Making TUIs
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
Countless reasons. Invent a gui client environment that is universal, works the same way everywhere, over any kind of channel, and is already implimented and supported everywhere, and utterly weightless in all dimensions (ram/cpu/network), and then you might be able to ask that question without it being incredibly ignorant. Today the closest you might be able to say is web/electron, which is gross on all counts. If a…
HTML/Javascript would like a word
Definitely not weightless. So much bloat has been dedicated to various frameworks for it, and modern browsers are notorious for how much RAM they require. I'm particularly reminded of this each time I try to visit websites on one of my older Raspberry Pis. You are just pushing much of that complexity and overhead to the client.
That same Pi won't even blink at a local TUI.