Hacker Timesnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Power users have always preferred the command-line, since expressing what you want to do as a programming language is of course much more powerful and productive than clicking menus.

To avoid context-switching from the command-line, many essential UIs were made text-only. Another route would have been to integrate the command-line within graphical applications, but few did it -- the main example that comes to mind is Jupyter.



Blender is a 3D modelling program with a scripting language in it (Python). When you open the scripting pane, it's a command line. But it doesn't try to force the whole program to be in the command line, only the part where the command line is actually useful.


TUIs are much closer to GUIs than CLIs. As a CLI enjoyer, I was resigned to the small win that at least many people distinguish TUI and CLI now but then I saw your comment.

There are quite a few GUIs that can be navigated with keyboard, e.g. menu bars can usually be activated with alt or win and single key presses


As I said, the advantage of the TUI is that they avoid context-switching.


Except the part where you switch into the TUI from a normal bash prompt, and your normal bash invocations get eaten by the parser..

Which is essentially exactly the same thing, except your UI is trash relative to a normal GUI


You're not switching, it's all in the same pane, doesn't mess with windowing or focus, your keyboards shortcuts still work etc.


TUIs don't use the command line (ie bash, fish, etc), though. They use ncurses




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: