Ask HN: Why are TUIs in trend?
1 pointby roundabout-host2 hours ago4 comments
  • kooi39 minutes ago
    Because of the increased supply of managing remote devices.

    The tradeoff with limited graphics is more expansive platform support.

    For example, we're doing some Layer 2/Layer 1 networking processing on an embedded linux environment. We can have a nice TUI displaying average SNR, various waveforms, connection status. It's great.

    Also, when you do lots of work with remote devices, having something like termscp is wonderful for file transfer.

  • BeetleBan hour ago
    > To me, they seem to have limited graphics like CLIs but lose the composability and automation.

    It would help the discussion if you gave examples.

    TUIs have always existed, and most always had these problems. Is there any particular TUI that exists which doesn't allow for automation/composability and for which there are no good CLI alternatives?

  • codemax982 hours ago
    AI coding agents made the terminal the primary surface again, and the tooling to build good TUIs finally got good at the same time
    • roundabout-host2 hours ago
      But why exactly are AI agents using the terminal? Can't they use accessibility tools to read GUIs?
      • ben_w43 minutes ago
        Sometimes. Sometimes they can read screeshots, too.

        But why waste tokens when bash (etc.) exists and many of the command line toools are configurable to what they emit when used?

  • ChrisArchitectan hour ago
    Related from a few months ago:

    Why TUIs are back

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48000028