> ...
> Essentially, "standardized structure but flexible schema" is the 'happy compromise' where the most fragile part is taken care of for you, but the least predictable and most variable part is still entirely customizable. You can see this work successfully in eg. nushell or Powershell, or even to a more limited degree in tools like `jq`.
That's a fair point, thanks for putting emphasis on this!
> I think there's a strong selection bias here. It's not without reason that so many people have an aversion to terminals today - they just aren't very good. And it's not just their terminal-ness either, because many people who cannot deal with a standard (eg. bash) shell will happily use terminal-like input systems in specialized software.
The question then becomes what can be reasonably done about it? Or rather, can it even be realistically achieved (in an arbitrary time scale that we care about), given how much of the culture and tooling is currently centered around passing text from one command to another. Change for something so foundational surely wouldn't be quick.
> But that's not a reason to downgrade the 'ideal' to fit the current reality, only a reason to acknowledge that we're just not there yet.
In the end, this probably sums it up nicely. Even if that current reality, which often will be the lowest common denominator, is what most people will earn their paychecks with (and possibly leave edge cases for someone else to deal with down the line).