Touch display terminal sounds mean…
That really sounds like hardware designers being very mean to programmers and terminal junkies, for sure.
I’ve never really understood the appeal of having a terminal app on your phone, for this reason - I get the cool factor, Android is based on Linux so being able to get deep into things and have terminal access to stuff on your handheld device, that follows the same conventions and standards as any more traditional computer you use at home does, is neat, sure, but actually seriously using a CLI with a phone keyboard sounds very frustrating.
I have a terminal app in my phone, but I don’t normally use it from the touch keyboard…
The main reason I have it is because from it I can install an ssh server (and a few other services, like privoxy and so) and then connect to the phone through ssh and access that CLI from other locations, even places where the internet is restricted/monitored or there isn’t a wifi access point (I can create a hotspot from the phone instead). If you are using a work laptop with restricted access, or are traveling and using a computer in your remote location, carrying around with you, in your pocket, a set of CLI / TUI tools and apps that you are familiar with can come in handy.
Also, nowadays you can plug a keyboard directly to your phone (a monitor too) and have it work as a portable terminal device. Of course it would be better if you were able to have a Desktop-grade OS in your phone for this… but things like termux work if you are a “terminal junkie”.
I suppose that would be good for emergencies or less than ideal situations, for all you “terminal junkies” out there, but… I tend to avoid the terminal in the first place, so I wouldn’t really have a need for such a thing or understand what people would use it for.
I really like the stuff in the middle like midnight commander. Idk why, it’s just the best of both worlds to me.
Tbh, I don’t hate CLI utilities or MC type “terminal interface” stuff. Honestly, if they are well documented and user friendly, I sometimes actually prefer them over a complex GUI cluttered with 20 options that aren’t the one thing I need. This isn’t about people using/recommending well documented, simple CLI tools that make complete computer idiots like me feel powerful and really don’t need a graphical frontend anyway. This is about people who insist on doing everything in a terminal window or in the TTY (and not even having a window manager installed), just for the sake of it, even when it comes to tasks where using the terminal really makes no sense.
An efficient interface is always an efficient interface.
hah, using language to interface with the computer is for idiots, pointing and grunting is the superior method!
Terminals do make more sense, if you know all the commands. And I must admit, “say the magic words and the computer does the thing” is pretty neat and makes me feel powerful.
it also means that there’s a smooth transition between doing a thing once and doing it a 1000 times (or otherwise automating it), because you’ve got a programming language right there already. no need to look for a “mass-x gui tool” for each x.
oh, and i think (though i have no actual experience with this) that it’s a lot easier to make terminals friendly for disabled people (blind, etc)
The CLI is also a much more reliable environment to provide instructions on how to do something.
Instructing people to click on “this button > tab > menu > submenu > item” is very exhausting for both instructor and reader, it’s language-dependant and less future-proof. Also sometimes the location of some graphic elements isn’t immediately obvious and there are cases where the only way to make sure people understand it is with a video tutorial of sorts. Which is annoying both to make and to have to sit and watch through.
This also makes the CLI better at reporting/diagnosing problems… for a GUI app, if you want to report a bug you have to write down a bible of steps on what things you clicked on, etc. (again, a video ultimately is needed to make things clear). Whereas a CLI app has all that information already in the parameters so you can just provide that as the report (along with any input/output data). Or simply copy the contents of your terminal.
Amusingly, I can see a future where LLMs become the default interface most people use making GUIs as we know them obsolete. Each app could provide MCP services, and then you UI would just be a text prompt and a canvas where whatever information you’re looking for is visualized in whatever way you need. The model would take care of coordinating the functionality from different available services and rendering the output on the fly.
That seems extremely frustrating to use. I don’t want or need that compared to what’s currently available.
And of course, there will always be people who want direct access to the underlying command line. Which is unsurprising now and will still be unsurprising in another 20 years.
I don’t think the underlying command line will go away, but if things moved in this direction that would be a benefit for people who use command line directly as well. The big disadvantage of GUI apps the way they work currently is that the UI is tightly coupled to the business logic. This makes it impossible to make scripts that combine functionality from different apps the way you can do with shell utils. In my opinion, this was the wrong direction all along. It would be much better if GUI apps were developed using client/server architecture. The service could then be used headless, and you could use it for MCPs for LLMs or to drive these services directly by hand.
Tbf, that is one thing about GUIs that certainly frustrates a lot of people. And I do quite like the concept of programs and utilities that can be used from a separate graphical interface that you only have to install if you want it, or via a command line, those are neat and an excellent example of a tool that can be used by the completely non-technical and also still provide useful functionality to power-users.
mm yes, i’d love to have a UI for the computer where the same input will produce different results each time (and makes half of it up on the spot) and you can never ever trust anything it outputs but have to check literally every single pixel carefully.
as opposed to entering a cli command you’re familiar with and checking just the little bit of the output that is relevant to you, because you are familiar with the output format and it’s stable.
i like having extra cognitive load, it helps.
Yeep. I don’t need a hallucination machine between me and my computer. I hate having to use the CLI, but that’s still better than a fucking chatbot getting in my way.
You wouldn’t be the target audience for this. Vast majority of people using computers aren’t technical, and they very much would prefer just being able to use natural language. The whole hallucination thing is also much less of a problem when the model is simply used as an interface to access services, pull data from them, and present it. In fact, you can already try this sort of functionality with DeepSeek right now, where it has a canvas, and you can ask it to pull some data from the internet and render it. I’m always amazed how technical people are utterly unable to step out of their shoes and imagine what a non technical person might prefer to use.
I dunno. I still think the types of graphical tools we have today are better than a chatbot for an interface. I often struggle with explaining what I want in a way that such a tool would actually return anything useful. I might try it once or twice, but I’d probably go back to a standard graphical interface pretty quick. I’m not a “terminal junkie” or particularly technical, but I absolutely hate the idea of a computer you have to talk to like it’s a person, I suck at dealing with people.
Sure, different people like different things. My original point was that just being able to use natural language would be a benefit for non technical users. Most people struggle with complex UIs or achieving tasks where they have to engage multiple apps. Being able to just explain what you want the way you would to another person would lower the barrier significantly. For technical users, we already have tools that we can leverage, but if MCP services started becoming a common way to build apps, then we’d get benefits from that as well.
People who keep parroting this clearly never bothered actually seeing how these tools work in practice. Go play with DeepSeek canvas and look at how it can render the data you give it. Meanwhile, what you as a technical user prefer is vastly different from what an average person wants.
yeah sure i’ll probably check it out one of these days, but i’ve never yet seen this technology do the same thing twice when you give it the same input twice…
I haven’t seen this to be a problem when you’re using it to pull data from existing sources with tools like MCPs. Specifically, the content stays stable even if there are minor presentation variations. That’s sufficient to be useful in most scenarios. Like if you get it to pull some JSON from a service and render a table or graph it, the content of the presentation will not change.
When I gave Qwen 2.5 VL Instruct the exact same input twice, it produced the exact same output.
