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Comment by daniel-grigg | Hacker News Reader

I could equally argue the opposite is true today. A good CLI program has either a —help option / man file. I run that and presto, I have every command and option succinctly presented.

Whereas with unfortunately far too many GUI apps today, discoverability is a trial and error mix of gesturing with various swipes, clicking odd shapes and asking friends how they accessed some random feature.

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GUI applications can have good documentation, which, if they do, makes your point moot.

If we assume a given tool has little or no documentation, a GUI wins out.

A good GUI will show you how to use it. That’s what UX is all about. But a CLI will always have to be learned.

A good CLI program, with autocompletion and on-screen documentation, will show how to use it. That's what UX is all about.

Many people cannot switch from one GUI to another GUI, e.g. from Photoshop to Gimp or from MS Word to LibreOffice, because they learned one GUI and don't want to relearn.

Can you name a CLI program that is as complex as Photoshop? There’s certainly CLI apps with good UX, and ones with bad UX. But I don’t see a reasonable way to argue that CLI has better UX tools than GUI. Autocomplete and tips can make a good CLI experience, but a good GUI experience can convey more information without even using those things.

VIM

Are you saying that vim is as complex as Photoshop? Or that the program famous for users not knowing how to exit it is an example of CLI UX?

Yes

https://sanctum.geek.nz/arabesque/vim-koans/

ImageMagick is CLI tool for photo editing.

GUI, video, VR are much better to transfer information than text. It's better to see once than to read 1000 times. GUI, video, and VR interfaces are much closer to real-world, so we can reuse our existing skills and be much more effective from start, without additional training. Text interfaces are often require abstract thinking, so left part of brain is working all time, while right part is sitting idle.

But from UX perspective, voice (Alexa) or input line (Google) can be as powerful as GUI. We already know that search engine is much better when user knows what he want but doesn't know where it is. Personal assistant (bot) is better than GUI when it is smart enough, because user can offload work to assistant. It's much easier to enter query or task than to draw it or select from endless options. It's also much easier to automate CLI than GUI.

I don't mind CLI programs. But there are definitely some things I wouldn't want to use them for. I couldn't imagine using a non GUI CAM or CAD program and a CAM program is far superior to coding a bunch of complex G-Code by hand. CLI video editing, 3D modelling or GIS work would be a pain compared to GUI versions. There are definitely places for both. Hence why we have both.

Also as a counter point switching between something like vim and Emacs is about as difficult as switching between Photoshop and gimp if not moreso.

If we take a random gui app and a random cli app the documentation of the cli app will usually be much better.

Additionally - documentation of gui app needs images which make searching for stuff much harder when you don't know the keywords.

I've often figured out a GUI faster than it would take me to sift through to the relevant part in a manpage. They work well enough as a reference but I don't understand how people genuinely think they are the ideal tool for learning how to use some new software.

I think so, too. This doesn't mean the CLI is less discoverable (assuming good design), just that active knowledge is harder to aquire than passive knowledge. Passive knowledge is enough to use a GUI, because you can just see where you need to click. There's a lot of "information in the world".

I find that CLIs are usually a little bit harder to learn, but often so much faster if you've learned them, that all professional developer tools should at least have CLI as a possibility.

But how do you know which CLI program to use?

Also, help is nice but I often end up having to search up examples to find out when certain options are appropriate. awk is my very least favorite in terms of "ease of use".

How do you know which gui programs to install?

Not everything can be done with microsoft home office.

Same way I find out which CLI program to use: Google.

> But how do you know which CLI program to use?

You run: apropos "keyword"

It shows all installed programs that have "keyword" in their manual page.

It shows gui programs as well, but sadly they often don't have a good manual.

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