Re:I Still Live in the Terminal
by bigstrat2003 on Sunday June 21, 2026 @08:12PM
(#48623958)
No. I prefer a GUI for anything that isn't going to be scripted (which is to say, most tasks that I do). Easier to work in, and much more discoverable than a CLI.
Re:I Still Live in the Terminal
by tacoda on Sunday June 21, 2026 @08:25PM
(#48624051)
I agree with this. If it’s text, I do it in the terminal, but I still use GUI for Chrome or Zoom. I think the discoverability depends on the product. On the other hand, in the terminal, it’s a help flag or a man page.
for me, it's less 'still' and more 'again'. claude code + API tokens means i no longer have to suffer the user-hostile design of many webpages. using full-screen claude code feels like finding my old DOS teddy from childhood buried in the back of a closet.
Re:I Still Live in the Terminal
by vitally3643 on Sunday June 21, 2026 @09:20PM
(#48624459)
The problem is that people turned "worse GUI" into a religion. We had good GUIs, but the GUI people all decided that making the GUIs worse was a brilliant thing to do
Re:I Still Live in the Terminal
by atoav on Monday June 22, 2026 @02:38AM
(#48626556)
The problem with GUIs is exactly why CLIs are preferred by many:
- GUIs keep radically changing how they look, at times even removing features, meanwhile some CLI interfaces haven't change in my lifetime
- CLIs are more often designed with synergetic effects in mind, they become part of ecosystems. Meanwhile you get the feeling many GUI applications start having a hard time saving a file to a local hard drive
- the filye types you will tend towards on a CLI are human readable and text based and can be opened in 50 years time without special vendor support
I am not that old, but the reason I like the CLI is simply because I feel GUIs come and go without improving the ecosystem they are in.
Re:I Still Live in the Terminal
by ralferoo on Monday June 22, 2026 @08:01AM
(#48628993)
> some CLI interfaces haven't change in my lifetime
But many others have, `ps -ef` vs `ps -aux` is one example. Nowadays, most systems support both, but not so long ago you'd need to remember which one to use depending what system you were on.
Re:I Still Live in the Terminal
by h4kunamata on Sunday June 21, 2026 @09:29PM
(#48624539)
>alias gp='git push'
I prefer CLI over GUI but I also prefer to have a life over making my life harder. On that same context, I prefer nano over vi/vim any time.
Now, the problem with aliases is that the more you use the more addicted you get. If you have to touch another terminal without those aliases, you will automatically try the aliases you are used to or create them so you can do whatever you have to do.
Meaning, it is not a practice easy to transfer to other environment. zsh + auto complete makes your life a lot easier and you won't forget the commands.
Re:I Still Live in the Terminal
by royal__ on Sunday June 21, 2026 @11:52PM
(#48625444)
> I prefer CLI over GUI but I also prefer to have a life over making my life harder.
I think this is actually a really profound statement. Many people seem to get caught up in trying to take the most efficient path when you could take a somewhat less efficient path that requires much less time. It can become a form of yak-shaving.
Now, don't get me wrong: there's absolutely a benefit in investing time to learn efficient methods. But life is also short, and you've gotta choose where you invest.
Re:I Still Live in the Terminal
by saurik on Monday June 22, 2026 @04:19AM
(#48627294)
Life is longer than a lot of people seem to think. I put a lot of effort into configuring vim and bash... 20 years ago maybe? And now I barely think about it, but the changes I made have made me more efficient and effective throughout those 20 years. Go ahead and put some time into figuring out how you use a tool and make scripts or aliases for using them... if you invest in good tools you will get decades of use out of, instead of chasing dumb fads, you'll just keep compounding your efficiency.
Re:I Still Live in the Terminal
by jhatemyjob on Monday June 22, 2026 @12:33PM
(#48632438)
I used to believe this for like 10 years. And I never had any custom environment. But then I was at a job where I was forced to create a custom dev environment, because theirs was awful. And then I had to transfer my scripts to another machine, and it turns out, it was actually really easy (just have a git repo you can pull from anywhere). I wasted 10 years with a subpar dev environment.
I'm actually at the point now where I just can do `curl https://website.com/my_environment.sh | bash`, and it sets everything up for me. So even if I SSH into a machine for a brief period of time I'll have my environment with me there too.
Re:I Still Live in the Terminal
by johntash on Monday June 22, 2026 @01:01AM
(#48625895)
For some reason, I can only scroll down a little bit on medium articles and then firefox freezes that tab and won't let me scroll up or down. I assume it has something to do with adblock, but I've noticed it a lot recently.
Re:I Still Live in the Terminal
by deafpolygon on Tuesday June 23, 2026 @03:01AM
(#48641342)
AI slop. There are many tell-tale signs that chatgpt or claude was being used. It’s very difficult to read, as it regurgitates the same thing over and over.
> Text is the universal interface
No wonder we don't get better GUIs if people keep turning the terminal into a religion.
- GUIs keep radically changing how they look, at times even removing features, meanwhile some CLI interfaces haven't change in my lifetime
- CLIs are more often designed with synergetic effects in mind, they become part of ecosystems. Meanwhile you get the feeling many GUI applications start having a hard time saving a file to a local hard drive
- the filye types you will tend towards on a CLI are human readable and text based and can be opened in 50 years time without special vendor support
I am not that old, but the reason I like the CLI is simply because I feel GUIs come and go without improving the ecosystem they are in.
But many others have, `ps -ef` vs `ps -aux` is one example. Nowadays, most systems support both, but not so long ago you'd need to remember which one to use depending what system you were on.
Should surely be "two-word"?
I prefer CLI over GUI but I also prefer to have a life over making my life harder. On that same context, I prefer nano over vi/vim any time.
Now, the problem with aliases is that the more you use the more addicted you get. If you have to touch another terminal without those aliases, you will automatically try the aliases you are used to or create them so you can do whatever you have to do.
Meaning, it is not a practice easy to transfer to other environment. zsh + auto complete makes your life a lot easier and you won't forget the commands.
I think this is actually a really profound statement. Many people seem to get caught up in trying to take the most efficient path when you could take a somewhat less efficient path that requires much less time. It can become a form of yak-shaving.
Now, don't get me wrong: there's absolutely a benefit in investing time to learn efficient methods. But life is also short, and you've gotta choose where you invest.
I'm actually at the point now where I just can do `curl https://website.com/my_environment.sh | bash`, and it sets everything up for me. So even if I SSH into a machine for a brief period of time I'll have my environment with me there too.
The nipple is the universal interface. Everything else is an abstraction.
> I still live in the terminal
But you frequent the fish market at chatgpt dot com, I suppose.