CLIs are reified UIs (2017)
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CLIs are reified UIs (2017)
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Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)
#2Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15619796
Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)
#3The 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't count. Like can we combine the advantages of CLI with the discoverability of GUIs? I wanna have the cake and eat the whole thing.
Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)
#4The 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…
I find CLIs to be more discoverable -- tab completion, help text, etc. represents a (relatively) standardized form of discovery. GUIs on the other hand may have cryptic icons, be arranged differently from each other, and have various hidden functionalities.
I'm not saying we can't make CLIs more discoverable, but I simply hold the opposite opinion: They already win out over GUIs on discoverability.
I think they lose out on /accessibility/ to most users, unfortunately.
Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)
#5The 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…
There can be an option --interactive. So if you type "ls --interactive", you get a fuzzy search prompt, where you can enter free form text, which can be matched against the main page description of each option, and the options can be surfaces in a scored manner. This will be similar to the search bar under the help menu in macos, which is something I use a lot to find out location of options. Might work for a lot of apps.
Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)
#6The 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 biggest problem with CLI is discoverability
I don't agree. Discoverability's a big problem with "modern" GUIs too.
> is there a way to make CLI "more discoverable"? Reading the man page doesn't count
Why doesn't reading the man page count? I've learned a hell of a lot more about CLI tools by reading their manual than I have by ... oh wait GUIs often don't come with a manual.
Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)
#7The 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 a VMS cluster at college and I found it to be a very nice approach. Quite a bit better than man pages and a lot more consistent in my opinion.
Some of them had easter eggs tucked away in them of course, such as the Datatrieve Wombat: https://www.ibphoenix.com/resources/documents/history/doc_29...
Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)
#8The 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…
People who are less confident with technology almost never try out things in GUIs in case they break. Those more confident tend to click on things just to see what they do. If a CLI user knows that they can type "--help" at the end of a command to start learning what it can do, I think that's a lot more "discoverable" than GUIs for less confident people.
Although what situation are you in where a not-confident person is even using a CLI?
Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)
#9While discoverability can be better with GUI's I find that googling things is always better for CLI tools. Most of my CLI search have a one or two lines of bash I can simply copy paste while solutions for GUI programms often involves lot's of screenshots of dropdowns to open and if the look of the application changed or the element's in the dropdown's are not the same it can be hard to follow.
Taking not's of how to do things or creating shorcuts will also always be better with CLI's since manipulation text is easy and always supported.
Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)
#10I have an experimental GUI that uses a simple language to reify interactions as described here. It works great.