Anil DashLOL I stepped away from Mastodon for a couple hours and everybody is VERY MAD that I made jokes about CLIs. I use them every day, guys, it's gonna be okay. I promise I did not hurt Zork's feelings. It is, however, a factual statement that CLIs are not discoverable user interfaces and they are a poor choice for mainstream audiences; this debate was settled long ago.
Steve Leach@anildash We *used* to have *documentation* and things didn't have to be "discoverable".
Kevin Boyd (he/him) 🇨🇦@stevenaleach @anildash I was there and I disagree. Otherwise, why did the acronym RTFM need to exist?
(Then again, today I am writing a CLI/possibly eventually TUI tool. Yes, in 2025.)
@kboyd @anildash Ah, but these days there usually is no FM to read. And if there is no FM, then you need to fall back on being intuitive, obvious,, and "discoverable".
But of course folks used to CLI will read --help and pick up on how to use a tool quickly. But someone has to actually *be* a CLI user first and their computer didn't ship with a manual explaining how to use the CLI. It just shipped with a desktop they can click around on and figure out how to use.
@stevenaleach @anildash Yeah, lots of people probably haven't heard of "jq" or "htop" or imagemagick. All of which are very useful.
David Fleetwood - RG Admin@stevenaleach @anildash Documentation that was rapidly outdated and incomplete. And rarely translated widely. However again, people should not have to read a book to operate a computer. Discoverability is important.
Pete / Syllopsium@reflex @stevenaleach @anildash We still have documentation and it is A Pain In The Arse.
CLIs have their place. However I am currently fiddling around with sorting a Unix PPP dialin for 'fun'.
On Windows this is a solved problem, you click a few boxes and it works. On Unix the documentation is in four different man pages, and requires tangential knowledge from at least another two.
Some modern cli and text file oriented software such as Kea and nsd/unbound are reasonably straightforward though, and largely don't make you lose the will to live.
@syllopsium @stevenaleach @anildash Literally this. Plus, again, discoverability! Unix apps are terribly named, nothing makes sense without years worth of memorization to anyone who hasn't been immersed in *nix for a very long time.
Janne Moren@stevenaleach @anildash
I use CLIs every day and have been for 40+ years. I also teach how to use the CLI and I support beginners and advanced users alike.
And while it is powerful - and, arguably, necessary in my field - the CLI also sucks.
There's no discoverability. Users live in constant fear they will break something and never even notice.
The CLI is fine *as a complement* to a GUI. Lean into its strengths. But it was never a viable interface for computing in general.
@jannem @stevenaleach I think that’s exactly it