Hacker News Reader

Comment by alejohausner | Hacker News Reader

What I really would like to see is a car with a full command-line interface with a qwerty keyboard built into the steering wheel. Then you could type

  > setgear r ENTER

To put the car in reverse. Of course people on hn could just abbreviate that to

  > r ENTER

using a ksh macro! But for newbie users we could have a 3 button mouse instead.

View on HN

You joke but there actually may be merit to it. Of course, you'd still need a GUI on top but you technically could put a full command-line interface with limited commands and actually sell it as a differentiating feature at this point.

For a time there were automatic transmission cars with push buttons. I think it was a 1950s/60s Great Idea. If I remember you had to reach around the steering wheel to access them.

Never used one but it fell out of favor.

Automobiles not so much, but modern airliner cockpits have this to a limited extent, notably navigation computer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com