bookmarks

2566 bookmarks
Custom sorting
Blog on tech, productivity, books, tools, and web development | Bojan Vidanovic
Replit — CLUI: Building a Graphical Command Line
Replit — CLUI: Building a Graphical Command Line
“Command line interfaces. Once that was all we had. Then they disappeared, replaced by what we thought was a great advance: GUIs. GUIs were - and still are - valuable, but they fail to scale to the demands of today's systems. So now command line interfaces are back again, hiding under the name of search. Now you see them, now you don't. Now you see them again. And they will get better and better with time: mark my words, that is my prediction for the future of interfaces.” [1] Don Norman wrote this in 2008. Since then, search has become more powerful and users have grown more dependent on it-- searching for information with context-aware autocomplete is present in almost every popular digital product. Traditional CLIs, however, were never widely adopted by end-users because of their learning curve. Terminals, the primary platform for command-lines, are intimidating and feel like a black box to non-technical people. Also, a text-only interface is limiting-- it only allows actions to take place through language instead of the clicks, taps, and hovers that we’re used to today. Commands and flags often have obscure names, and spelling mistakes can result in cryptic errors, or worse, doing something you didn't intend. Despite all these problems, CLIs are still powerful. The input mechanism is always the same: text. It’s predictable and constant. Adding more commands takes minimal effort from the developer. Users aren’t overwhelmed with information-- you just specify the exact commands you need at any given moment. These benefits, however, come with the tradeoff that commands must be memorized to be efficient. Today, GUIs are the most popular user interface paradigm because they address many of the concerns above. They use visual metaphors for everyday objects we are used to: desktops, windows, tabs, buttons, menus, files, and folders. They’re intuitive and offer a small learning curve to perform basic actions, like moving files via drag and drop. It’s faster to recognize an icon than to remember the action’s name. The benefits of GUIs are rooted in both memory recognition, which “...refers to our ability to “recognize” an event or piece of information as being familiar”, and memory recall, which “...designates the retrieval of related details from memory.” [4, 5] So GUIs are obviously the best UI paradigm ever, right? Probably not. Although GUIs might solve some core usability issues that most CLIs present, they "...fail to scale to the demands of today's systems" [2, 3]. The moment you want to add a feature to a GUI, there’s an immediate question about where to put that feature. Should it be in the top right? Bottom left? Nav bar? Behind a tab? In the sidebar? Revealed on hover?
·blog.replit.com·
Replit — CLUI: Building a Graphical Command Line
Becoming a Better Writer as a Software Engineer - The Pragmatic Engineer
Becoming a Better Writer as a Software Engineer - The Pragmatic Engineer
Writing is an increasingly important skill for engineering leaders. Indeed, poor writing can hamper career progression, above a certain level. Tactics for more clear, more frequent and more confident writing. I’ve observed that my writing is not up to par with my peers. How can I improve my professional
·blog.pragmaticengineer.com·
Becoming a Better Writer as a Software Engineer - The Pragmatic Engineer