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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

Exactly. Interacting with a chatbot had no better features than a menu system, but you had to guess what the menus were. A crazy idea.

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> ...no better features than a menu system, but you had to guess what the menus were.

This is also true for CLI interfaces. It illustrates the popularity of GUIs - much to the dismay of CLI enthusiasts everywhere.

Edit: Yes, a -help or "help" command can be used to list the menu. But then this command has to be known beforehand. What if a clever designer decides to use -assist or "assistance" instead?

CLIs, though, serve a different market. I put them in the 'professional' box, alongside Autocad and such; yes, these tools are built with the assumption that the people using them have experience using them.

IVR, is supposed to be 'intuitive' or 'natural' or however one's preferred marketing dialect describes it. The assumption is usually flipped - that tools are supposed to assist those ignorant of their use[1].

It has been a long time since normal users have been expected to use a CLI. If you're looking at one, you choose to. This is not at all true of IVR/Sirlextana.

[1] Of course, they don't serve the caller, they serve the robot's owner, so interests are only aligned to the extent the robot efficiently helps the caller with their goal, which adds an additional layer of opportunity for frustration.

Note that mobile GUIs have often re-invented the "undiscoverable" interface, where things like swipe or long-press do things but it's not obvious where you can safely do them.

I wonder if this app has a drawer.

swipes to the right

> Message archived.

No wtf.

undo

Guess it doesn't.

You need to swipe from the left edge to Open drawer, but swipe to the right edge to Discard. Totally different operations, obviously.

With CLI, you usually can type help or add a -h to the command or something like that and you'll be presented with options and examples.

You really don't have this option with voice. On the other hand, when I visited my mother I was surprised that she figured out that Google Assistant can provide her with nutrition information. She would have never figured out by herself on a CLI or menu because it's very intimidating.

This somewhat contradicts my previous comment about how much I dislike voice interfaces but they probably have some strengths.

> With CLI, you usually can type help or add a -h to the command or something like that and you'll be presented with options and examples

And you get to enjoy fumbling around trying to guess whether this particular program's magic incantation to summon help is "help", "-h", "--help", "?", "/?"...

It's definitely not ideal, no wonder why GUI is so successful.

Most chat bots respond to ‘help’ with a list of commands.

In my experience, these "commands" are also quite vague. Instead of expecting the "help", they should just put (x) and show the menu where I can click on things and be done with it.

On voice interface, your best chanse is to connect to an actual intelligent being as soon as possible because getting the options is a frustration by it's own.

My experience is that they tend to repeat their intro dialogue, which is often something like "tell me a few words about why you're calling, for instance you could say 'upgrade account' or 'billing issue'". Unlike keypress phone trees, they virtually never enumerate all the options.

If I'm saying 'help' it means I've tried that and failed, so it's not clear what the benefit is.

At least with a cli you can usually invoke help and visually scan the text for what you want. With audio chatbots, listening to a list of options quickly becomes tedious.

As a tech oriented site we're nearly all accustomed to unix/unix-inspired general purpose CLIs. However that's not all that exists. There exist more specialized systems, such as those designed to be used over teletype machines, that present the user with a pre-defined menu prompt at each step in the interaction. However unlike with voice-oriented systems, the user can sit there and read the entire list of options for as long as they'd like. You connect, and a menu prints out. You press a key to make a selection and a new menu prints out, or the system prompts you to enter a different sort of data.

Think back to the earliest programming courses people take:

    What's your first name: Jack
    What's your last name: Ch
    Hello Jack Ch!

The point of a CLI is to be able to write programs to handle complicated interactions between applications with ease, and by default. A gui doesn't have a pipe.

Not to be too curmudgeonly but you don't have to guess, almost all those CLI interfaces have a manual and a --help function. You can't ask a chatbot what its options are.

Ok, so...

Linux Newbie:

"I need to find out how much space I have left on this machine."

  > freespace
  bash: freespace: command not found
  > diskspace
  bash: diskspace: command not found
  > disk info
  bash: disk: command not found
  > diskinfo
  bash: diskinfo: command not found
  > man disk space
  No manual entry for disk
  No manual entry for space
  > help disk space
  bash: help: no help topics match `space'.  Try `help help' or `man -k space' or `info space'.

(looks it up on the internet)

  > df /dev/sda1
  Filesystem     1K-blocks    Used Available Use% Mounted on
  /dev/sda1       19478160 1370768  17094912   8% /

... AND that's why GUIs are preferred by most non-technical computer users.

EDIT: Maybe I should have said 'CLI Newbie' - I am in no-way singling out Linux here.

    $ apropos space
    CORE (3perl)         - Namespace for Perl's core routines
    arpd (8)             - userspace arp daemon.
    CMSG_SPACE (3)       - access ancillary data
    CUDA_ERROR_INVALID_ADDRESS_SPACE (3) - (unknown subject)
    cudaErrorInvalidAddressSpace (3) - (unknown subject)
    df (1)               - report file system disk space usage

Thank you, you just re-enforced my point; I've been using Linux seriously for about a year now, and I didn't know about 'apropos'. Bash never mentioned it whenever I got stuck, and my learning travels on the internet has never referenced it.

Hah, I've been using Unix-based OSes in a professional capacity for over 15 years and I've never heard of apropos. :)

There is also `man -k`. -k of course is short for "apropos". It's all very logical and intuitive.

(Seriously though, reading the manpage for man is where I first learned about apropos.)

Honestly google is a better tool unless you already kind of know what you're looking for.

Google "linux how much space on drive" and the first hit tells you exactly what you need.

Another question someone might ask is "how do I change my password". Google for "linux change password" and there is a special help box right at the top of the search results.

apropos password and you get this enormous list:

  apg (1)              - generates several random passwords
  chage (1)            - change user password expiry information
  chgpasswd (8)        - update group passwords in batch mode
  chpasswd (8)         - update passwords in batch mode
  cpgr (8)             - copy with locking the given file to the password or gr...
  cppw (8)             - copy with locking the given file to the password or gr...
  cracklib-check (8)   - Check passwords using libcrack2
  create-cracklib-dict (8) - Check passwords using libcrack2
  crypt (3)            - password and data encryption
  crypt_r (3)          - password and data encryption
  des_read_2passwords (3ssl) - Compatibility user interface functions
  des_read_password (3ssl) - Compatibility user interface functions
  doveadm-pw (1)       - Dovecot's password hash generator
  endpwent (3)         - get password file entry
  endspent (3)         - get shadow password file entry
  EVP_BytesToKey (3ssl) - password based encryption routine
  expiry (1)           - check and enforce password expiration policy
  fgetpwent (3)        - get password file entry
  fgetspent (3)        - get shadow password file entry
  fgetspent_r (3)      - get shadow password file entry
  getpass (3)          - get a password
  getpw (3)            - reconstruct password line entry
  getpwent (3)         - get password file entry
  getpwnam (3)         - get password file entry
  getpwnam_r (3)       - get password file entry
  getpwuid (3)         - get password file entry
  getpwuid_r (3)       - get password file entry
  getspent (3)         - get shadow password file entry
  getspent_r (3)       - get shadow password file entry
  getspnam (3)         - get shadow password file entry
  getspnam_r (3)       - get shadow password file entry
  git-credential-cache (1) - Helper to temporarily store passwords in memory
  gitcredentials (7)   - providing usernames and passwords to Git
  grpconv (8)          - convert to and from shadow passwords and groups
  grpunconv (8)        - convert to and from shadow passwords and groups
  grub-mkpasswd-pbkdf2 (1) - generate hashed password for GRUB
  lckpwdf (3)          - get shadow password file entry
  login.defs (5)       - shadow password suite configuration
  lppasswd (1)         - add, change, or delete digest passwords.
  Net::LDAP::Control::PasswordPolicy (3pm) - LDAPv3 Password Policy control object
  Net::LDAP::Extension::SetPassword (3pm) - LDAPv3 Modify Password extension ob...
  pam_pwhistory (8)    - PAM module to remember last passwords
  pam_unix (8)         - Module for traditional password authentication
  passwd (1)           - change user password
  passwd (1ssl)        - compute password hashes
  passwd (5)           - the password file
  passwd2des (3)       - RFS password encryption
  putpwent (3)         - write a password file entry
  putspent (3)         - get shadow password file entry
  pwck (8)             - verify integrity of password files
  pwconv (8)           - convert to and from shadow passwords and groups
  pwunconv (8)         - convert to and from shadow passwords and groups
  seahorse (1)         - Passwords and Keys
  setpwent (3)         - get password file entry
  setspent (3)         - get shadow password file entry
  sgetspent (3)        - get shadow password file entry
  sgetspent_r (3)      - get shadow password file entry
  shadow (5)           - shadowed password file
  shadowconfig (8)     - toggle shadow passwords on and off
  smbpasswd (5)        - The Samba encrypted password file
  smbpasswd (8)        - change a user's SMB password
  ulckpwdf (3)         - get shadow password file entry
  unix_chkpwd (8)      - Helper binary that verifies the password of the curren...
  unix_update (8)      - Helper binary that updates the password of a given user
  vigr (8)             - edit the password, group, shadow-password or shadow-gr...
  vipw (8)             - edit the password, group, shadow-password or shadow-gr...
  xcrypt (3)           - RFS password encryption
  xdecrypt (3)         - RFS password encryption
  xencrypt (3)         - RFS password encryption

If you didn't already know you were looking for the "passwd" command it might be hard to pick it out of the list.

    $ apropos -a change password
    chage (1)            - change user password expiry information
    kpasswd (1)          - change a user's Kerberos password
    passwd (1)           - change user password
    PKCS12_newpass (3ssl) - change the password of a PKCS12 structure

    $ apropos -a space disk
    df (1)               - report file system disk space usage
    df (1p)              - report free disk space

The fact that the search defaults to "or" instead of "and" is a design flaw IMHO. By far the most common case when you have multiple arguments is that you want the item that contains all of the keywords.

Filter it by section...

man -k -S1 password

Nothing says user friendly like making the user read the manual for his manual so he can memorize the nine different categories (plus perhaps custom categores like TCLs) to get the manual page he wants.

I use man and apropos all of the time, but I have no illusion that they're new user friendly. They're amazing when you just need to look up some options or get the syntax for a system call, but if you've not assimilated the Unix way of thinking they're quite obtuse.

This example would be a lot less ironically-unhelpful if 'apropos' were renamed 'help'.

The name “help” is, unfortunately, already taken by a shell built-in command. But one could argue that this help command should be very much more helpful than the restricted functionality it currently implements.

I think people would complain that apropos doesn't do its job if it were named help.

Apropos would be a powerful part of a "help" command, but in 50 years nobody has ever written a help command that gained enough traction to be included in the standard toolchain.

Request granted!

Apropos doesn’t do it’s job because it isn’t named — or integrated with — help.

I feel like the real problem here is that bash is still the default and bash defaults/UX are straight up awful. The fish shell gets a lot of things right in regards to a sane out of the box experience, though there are a few things it could do better.

The tools themselves leave a lot to be desired from a UX experience too. Things like nonsense names, bad defaults and/or no inherent intelligence in the program, means you have to specify numerous options manually for things that should be easy to automate.

The whole experience would benefit greatly by telling people about things like man/apropros on first startup and other one time tutorials.

There are some days where I feel tempted to write small helper scripts whose sole purpose would be to rename/reorient the default experience/flags of various CLI apps, so that it is not a jumbled mess full of historical accidents that can no longer be changed.

Windows Newbie:

“I need to find out how much space I have left on this machine.”

Now what?

"Oh there's a folder icon" (click)

"Oh there's an entry called My PC" (click)

"Aha, there's my disk and little bar showing the free space"

It's two clicks if you have your wits about you, maybe a few more if its not that obvious.

I don't know why you singled out Windows. It's just as easy in Gnome or KDE etc - the point here is that CLIs can never be as intuitive as GUIs. As the original article said - Humans are very visual people. Seeing things in a visual space is much easier for us.

Further, Windows will pop up a notification that your disk space is running low, and this opens another window with suggestions for different types of files (temporary update files, temporary internet files, recycle bin, installed programs) that can be removed to release space.

Ubuntu does warnings for low disk space too.

Personally I think the experience is very similar for noobs.

Press windows key, type "space". First item is "Storage". Press enter or click it, you see a prominent progress bar like thing and text: "300GB used, 164GB free".

Click on My PC. The answer is there on the disk icons.

But then again, why wouldn't the Linux guy search google in the first place?

Or if it is a total newbie, look for the disk icons, the information is there as well.

> You can't ask a chatbot what its options are.

then it's a really bad one.

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