In a GUI application, you can usually just put less often used capabilities into a menu bar, then the user can find it there. In a TUI application, the user will need to spend time to learn it, with the danger of forgetting it. And on the modern AI slop infested web, “Googling” became harder, and I managed to nuke a Raspberry Pi installation from an article that told me how to set paths in Linux.
Yeah to most people that’s more effort than going through menu’s. Especially people with photographic memory benefit from GUI (don’t remember name of thing you’re looking for but you know where it can be found). Terminal for daily usage is definitely not for everyone.
I knew about <Program> -h but I didn’t know man. And that’s as someone who’s been using Linux for two years and has an engineering degree. Gui is simple in that natural exploration will allow people to intuit where to look for things. Bad gui is worse, as anyone who’s worked with erp software knows, but the command line is less intuitive for exploration for many people and that means they build skills in gui.
For me, terminal programs make a lot more sense. They’re also easier to make. GUI limits where you can run <program> and what it can do. I mostly code server side stuff, but sometimes I make web and desktop apps, so I’ve got plenty of experience coding them all. I also understand most people don’t want what I want or like what I like.
In a GUI application, you can usually just put less often used capabilities into a menu bar, then the user can find it there. In a TUI application, the user will need to spend time to learn it, with the danger of forgetting it. And on the modern AI slop infested web, “Googling” became harder, and I managed to nuke a Raspberry Pi installation from an article that told me how to set paths in Linux.
man <program>
or
<program> --help
Yeah to most people that’s more effort than going through menu’s. Especially people with photographic memory benefit from GUI (don’t remember name of thing you’re looking for but you know where it can be found). Terminal for daily usage is definitely not for everyone.
I knew about <Program> -h but I didn’t know man. And that’s as someone who’s been using Linux for two years and has an engineering degree. Gui is simple in that natural exploration will allow people to intuit where to look for things. Bad gui is worse, as anyone who’s worked with erp software knows, but the command line is less intuitive for exploration for many people and that means they build skills in gui.
For me, terminal programs make a lot more sense. They’re also easier to make. GUI limits where you can run <program> and what it can do. I mostly code server side stuff, but sometimes I make web and desktop apps, so I’ve got plenty of experience coding them all. I also understand most people don’t want what I want or like what I like.