Why TUIs Are Back
Terminal User Interfaces (TUIs) are experiencing a resurgence due to their efficiency and immediate feedback, especially among developers and power users. This trend reflects broader dissatisfaction with the fragmentation and inconsistency of native desktop application frameworks across Windows, Linux, and macOS. Electron-based applications, despite their popularity, are criticized for poor user experience, high resource usage, and lack of keyboard-driven workflows.
- ▪DHH’s Omarchy relies on TUIs for immediate feedback and developer preference, alongside web and native apps.
- ▪Windows has cycled through multiple failed GUI frameworks, including MFC, WinForms, WPF, and WinUI, leading to development fragmentation.
- ▪Linux desktop environments suffer from intentional UI inconsistency due to competing frameworks like GTK and Qt, while macOS has deviated from its once-praised Human Interface Guidelines.
- ▪Electron apps like VSCode and Slack dominate despite criticism over memory usage, visual inconsistency, and poor keyboard navigation support.
- ▪Developers increasingly favor TUIs and web apps over native applications due to the complexity, instability, and inefficiency of modern native UI frameworks.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Why TUIs are back Terminal User Interfaces (TUIs) are making a comeback. DHH’s Omarchy is made of three types of user interfaces: TUIs, for immediate feedback and bonus geek points, webapps because 37signals (his company) sells SAAS web applications and the unavoidable gnome-style native applications that really do not fit well in the style of the distro. The same pattern occurred around 10 years ago in code editors. We came from the native editors of BBEdit, Textmate (also promoted by DHH), Notedpad++ and Sublime to Electro-powered apps like Atom, VSCode and all its forks. The hardcore, moved to vim or emacs, trading immediate feedback and higher usability for the steepest learning curve I’ve seen. Windows The lesson is clear: Native applications are losing.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Alcidesfonseca.
Discussion
0 commentsMore from Alcidesfonseca
