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CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

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Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

#51

Post by slightwinder »

jakear wrote: post #18
slightwinder wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Looking at Docker CLI, there are like a bazillion commands and it takes forever to read through the docs to find out what exactly to use. Is this really a problem of CLI or just an example of a complex application? If we take for example something like excel or photoshop, then you can't easily figure what to do, even if the doc is directly embedded inside the UI. > Back to discoverability, is there a way to make CL…

The hundreds of millions of people that use excel with limited to no training would likely beg to differ with the proposition that it isn’t discoverable. I’ve never taken an excel class or read basic excel docs, yet I know how to do basic excel things. That’s literally impossible in a CLI. Similarly, how many people have trouble saving and quitting a word document? What about vim?

So the first app you ever used in your life was excel and nobody ever explained you it's purpose? How did you ever learn how the mouse works?

Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

#52

Post by doctor_eval »

dcminter wrote: post #7
fermienrico wrote: post #3

The biggest problem with CLI is discoverability as the article points out. Looking at Docker CLI, there are like a bazillion commands and it takes forever to read through the docs to find out what exactly to use. Furthermore, there are some commands that depend on the others being there - that breaks the composability. Back to discoverability, is there a way to make CLI "more discoverable"? Reading the man page doesn…

The VMS operating system had a standardized command line help UX. Typing HELP gave you an overview of commands available (Curses style) and you could drill down into more specific commands from that. If you knew the command but not the flags then you could add the HELP flag to get more and more specific information. See page 1-18 and 1-19 of the user guide: https://www.isis.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/vms-user-manual.pdf We had…

ISTM that Curses style applications are not really CLIs, but GUIs implemented using character cells instead of pixels.

In a sense, the help pages are a super-thin GUI on top of the underlying CLI.

Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

#53

Post by slightwinder »

funcDropShadow wrote: post #43
slightwinder wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Looking at Docker CLI, there are like a bazillion commands and it takes forever to read through the docs to find out what exactly to use. Is this really a problem of CLI or just an example of a complex application? If we take for example something like excel or photoshop, then you can't easily figure what to do, even if the doc is directly embedded inside the UI. > Back to discoverability, is there a way to make CL…

> No, the moment you embedd the discoverabilty of GUI it stops being a CLI. That statement is falsified by the advent of programmable completions. Nothing stops us from integrating context sensitive help into the shell completion mechanism. The shell could display a help text next to each item of a completion list, or you could press keyboard shortcut to get help to the command your cursor is positioned on. shellchec…

Completions are very limited in their surface. And you still need to learn where to start to get the completion.

Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

#54

Post by zomglings »

fermienrico wrote: post #3

The biggest problem with CLI is discoverability as the article points out. Looking at Docker CLI, there are like a bazillion commands and it takes forever to read through the docs to find out what exactly to use. Furthermore, there are some commands that depend on the others being there - that breaks the composability. Back to discoverability, is there a way to make CLI "more discoverable"? Reading the man page doesn…

Tab completion makes CLIs more discoverable.

It still places some responsibility on the developer of the command line tool to expose a reasonable interface. But if they do so, users can learn the interface by tab-ing their way to glory.

The Google Cloud SDK (gcloud command-line tool) is a really great example of this. It was the first cloud infrastructure I worked on and I learned how Google Cloud worked by tab-completing gcloud commands and reading the --help pages.

AWS CLI is an example of when too much complexity is exposed to the user. They have similar tab completion functionality, but they provide such fine grained control that it is hard to use it to learn the services themselves.

Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

#55

Post by crazygringo »

cma wrote: post #38
crazygringo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GUIs are deeply nested. And context sensitive so it may not even be possible to see actions until certain condition is met. This is a feature, not a bug. For me, browsing 20 pages of --help or man is a discoverability nightmare. I don't want to wade through arcane option after arcane argument. The GUI gives me a well-organized top-level understanding of the program: organized menus, and organized panes (panels/pale…

I rarely wade through it and just search for what I'm looking for. Typing '-i' (in the session, not as a param) will make the search case insensitive if using 'less'.

That's great, but that's not discoverability, that's searching for something you know/hope/suspect is already there.

Discoverability is about having what you can do be presented to you in the first place. It's the very opposite of looking things up. The information comes to you in a contextual way, instead of you having to go searching for it.

Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

#56

Post by themacguffinman »

cma wrote: post #38
crazygringo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GUIs are deeply nested. And context sensitive so it may not even be possible to see actions until certain condition is met. This is a feature, not a bug. For me, browsing 20 pages of --help or man is a discoverability nightmare. I don't want to wade through arcane option after arcane argument. The GUI gives me a well-organized top-level understanding of the program: organized menus, and organized panes (panels/pale…

I rarely wade through it and just search for what I'm looking for. Typing '-i' (in the session, not as a param) will make the search case insensitive if using 'less'.

So the solution is to use another separate CLI utility that you have to read the manual for, and memorize '-i' as an option for it?

Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

#57

Post by jsrcout »

old-gregg wrote: post #44
njharman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GUIs are a discoverability nightmare. I've always found --help (or help for tools breakin the "standard") and man pages massively more discoverable than any gui. There are two well known entry points "--help" and "man". There has been much convention standardization with operating system guis, still they have many, many possible entry points. not all programs use same ones, use in same way. And webapps/pages are comp…

> GUIs are a discoverability nightmare. Badly made GUIs are. I started my career developing desktop software. Both Apple and Microsoft used to publish guides for building proper GUIs for their platforms. Our UX designers and PMs were enforcing those vigorously. On Windows, every feature had to be represented in the menu of the main window. See, right there, by going (not even clicking on) every menu item you will lea…

I fondly remember Apple's Human Interface Guidelines for the Macintosh, and software that followed it. Even if you'd never seen a given application before you could easily discover its features and how to operate it.

Having said that, I think CLI programs tend to not get enough credit for discoverability. It's just a different kind of discoverability (man $program, $program --help).

Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

#58

Post by jsrcout »

dcminter wrote: post #7
fermienrico wrote: post #3

The biggest problem with CLI is discoverability as the article points out. Looking at Docker CLI, there are like a bazillion commands and it takes forever to read through the docs to find out what exactly to use. Furthermore, there are some commands that depend on the others being there - that breaks the composability. Back to discoverability, is there a way to make CLI "more discoverable"? Reading the man page doesn…

The VMS operating system had a standardized command line help UX. Typing HELP gave you an overview of commands available (Curses style) and you could drill down into more specific commands from that. If you knew the command but not the flags then you could add the HELP flag to get more and more specific information. See page 1-18 and 1-19 of the user guide: https://www.isis.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/vms-user-manual.pdf We had…

And VMS' printed documentation was fantastic. You could practically learn C by reading the compiler doc. It really went above and beyond.

Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

#59

Post by jsrcout »

Someone wrote: post #16
fermienrico wrote: post #3

The biggest problem with CLI is discoverability as the article points out. Looking at Docker CLI, there are like a bazillion commands and it takes forever to read through the docs to find out what exactly to use. Furthermore, there are some commands that depend on the others being there - that breaks the composability. Back to discoverability, is there a way to make CLI "more discoverable"? Reading the man page doesn…

MPW Commando still hasn’t been beaten, IMO. See my earlier comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22499855 It may not scale to meta commands such as docker and terraform, though. You’ll also need something to figure out which commands might help you do whatever you want to do. Apropos and locate help a bit there, but IMO need improvement. https://pypi.org/project/howdoi/ is an attempt at that. I’ve never use…

Commando - now that was a fantastic tool. Thanks for reminding me.

Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

#60

Post by ken »

c-smile wrote: post #45
njharman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GUIs are a discoverability nightmare. I've always found --help (or help for tools breakin the "standard") and man pages massively more discoverable than any gui. There are two well known entry points "--help" and "man". There has been much convention standardization with operating system guis, still they have many, many possible entry points. not all programs use same ones, use in same way. And webapps/pages are comp…

> GUIs are a discoverability nightmare. Which GUI?

Every touch-based one, for starters. I don't know what I can tap, or what will happen if I tap them. Or long-tap, or double-tap, or lightly-tap. Or what the various swipe directions mean, or how swipe-from-edge differs, or the differences between a 1-, 2-, and 3-finger swipe. And nobody ever guessed how to "undo" on iOS without being told.
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