Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why TUIs are back

wiki.alcidesfonseca.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 443 posts

Re: Why TUIs are back

#81

Post by breuleux »

beej71 wrote: post #15

The best thing about TUIs is that they're so fast. They launch fast, run fast, and you use them fast. There's a learning curve for the bazillion hotkeys, because all it is is hot keys, but when you have it, you just fly. I've been reverting more and more: mutt (mail), newsboat (RSS), amfora (gemini protocol), gurk (Signal), chawan (web), and even trn (Usenet). My RAM usage is tiny. Everything is quick. GUIs should ta…

> They launch fast, run fast, and you use them fast.

I don't know about that. The Gemini TUI takes like four full seconds to start on my machine. I have no idea what the hell it's doing. A lot of the fancy new TUIs that are coming on the crest of the current fad are hot garbage. I hate them.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#82

Post by pelcg »

There are a lot of TUIs in existence worth looking at if one is interested or curious about them [0], [1], [2]

[0] https://github.com/rothgar/awesome-tuis

[1] https://terminaltrove.com/explore/

[2] https://github.com/ibraheemdev/modern-unix

Even before Claude Code, I always see htop as the prime example of a good TUI.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#83

Post by moomin »

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.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#84

Post by flir »

exe34 wrote: post #54
koliber wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad UI plagued software development since ages immortal. The reason is not AI. Good UI design is a skill (or art?) and not an afterthought. But most people do not see it that way and that is why things are the way they are.

> since ages immortal since time immemorial?

3rd Sept 1189.

Anything after that is time memorial I guess.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#85

Post by sombragris »

I fully agree about the overall downward trend in quality and efficiency of GUI apps, but I also think there's an important factor in the rise of TUI apps:

People now have access to good terminal emulators. Back in the day, you had cmd.exe in Windows. Now you have a plethora of Linux/Unix terminal emulators, Terminal.app in MacOS, and Windows Terminal in Windows 10/11. These are quite capable applications able to render good, complex text-based interfaces.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#86

Post by gray_-_wolf »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #32

Because nobody is investing in native UI development. Electron is proof that if there were a simple to use GUI stack that companies would adopt it.

I mean, both wxWidgets and Qt are fine, no? GTK 2 and 3 as well (4+ is... meh). There are plenty applications using one of these (often via python bindings).

I think it is more of a staffing problem. Plenty of people know web development, so you want to use those people for desktop as well. Having desktop be JS (electron) helps a lot with that.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#87

Post by azuanrb »

ohnei wrote: post #19

The TUIs I've looked at seem to be largely NPM dependent? Bizarre that agents apparently don't have time to rewrite themselves in something that isn't a security tire fire. It kind of makes me assume that all this agents taking over stuff is from people working at garbage-pivot-garbage startups that don't really have to worry about any consequences but not being fast enough.

[flagged]

Re: Why TUIs are back

#88

Post by kjuulh »

I am conflicted on tuis they are nice, convenient and I dig the aestetic. But they're often not composeable. So even if they're there they dont feel native to the terminal. It is just an app in the terminal and that is okay, but you lose some of the terminal magic

Re: Why TUIs are back

#89

Post by _jackdk_ »

The diagnosis for GNU/Linux is better than I expected but I think is still incomplete. Yes, you have two major toolkits (GTK+ and Qt) and many minor ones (most of which wrap one of the majors). Qt is proprietary but also available under a free software licence, but what if you don't want that that complexity? It feels like modern GTK+ is less of a cross-platform toolkit and more of a runtime layer for libaidwaita and the GNOME stack. So if you don't want to conform to GNOME's UI conventions, it's not clear where else to go.

Also, the explosion of new languages in recent years means having to write a new set of FFI wrappers around existing libraries, and it's easier to make an idiomatic library for TUI development than wrap all of GTK+ or Qt.

Re: Why TUIs are back

#90

Post by esafak »

Because LLMs operate on text, and their purveyors claim natural language interfaces are the best thing since sliced bread, since that's what they sell.
Post reply on HN