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Comment by mihaic | Hacker News Reader

The people that keep arguing for TUIs for everything seem like religious fundamentalists that can't be convinced with any argument that user interfaces should be about the user, and need to adapt to the task at hand.

Every time I use Claude Code, I'm wondering why the hell I'm regressing to the level of a machine. I paste an image that I want fixed, and I don't see the preview of it. I can't cut or edit text somewhere in the middle of a long sentence like in a normal user interface. I can't visualize any helpful graphics, not even Latex. I'm forced to interface like a machine when I'm a human being.

Why can't developers understanding that GUIs and TUIs both have their usage, it just depends on the task?

I'm fine to use vim over ssh into a server, just don't force me to edit fine typography with it.

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> The people that keep arguing for TUIs for everything seem like religious fundamentalists that can't be convinced with any argument that user interfaces should be about the user, and need to adapt to the task at hand.

We are users.

> Why can't developers understanding that GUIs and TUIs both have their usage, it just depends on the task?

Isn't that the case for most TUI apps? They tend to serve quite specific purposes. Nobody writes a WYSIWYG word processor in a TUI. Because you can't and even if you could somehow with sixels it would work horribly bad.

> We are users.

In a dual role, I would say that the most impactful aspect (being a developer) matters more.

> Nobody writes a WYSIWYG word processor in a TUI.

But at the same time people write all sorts of other apps that could hugely benefit from a GUI. I seems like if the output itself is not graphical, TUI-enthusiasts won't acknowledge the advantages of a GUI layer, while only bringing in arguments why they can implemented poorly.

GUIs have a much higher surface to be done wrong, so standards are higher. But there's still a decision that needs to be weighed carefully, and many developers seems to simply jump on the TUI bandwagon just because it's easier.

I don't think a TUI is easier tbh. It's certainly more economical on resources, that's for sure. Really amazing programs running in 35k or so, compared to hundreds of MB for a whole electron stack. The more decent platform native and Qt apps are nicely in the middle but they are kinda becoming extinct. Even Microsoft is just serving us electron slop these days (though they call it something else)

But a TUI needs dedicated understanding of terminal toolkits. That's not easy. A GUI is much more easy mode with electron, a bit of javascript and a GUI toolkit to design the UI, easy peasy. To me the TUI is the hard option.

I really enjoy TUIs though. I wish there was something like vscode in TUI.

> The people that keep arguing for TUIs… Every time I use Claude Code

As far as I can tell, practically everyone arguing for TUIs thinks Claude Code is a horrible example.

Claude Code should be heavily sandboxed to be used safely. Are you advocating requiring a gfx stack in the sandbox just to use Claude Code?

No?

I don't get your argument. Can't you separate your input box from your execution engine?

Why would that be?

I honestly get better results out of claude at the command line than inside a GUI. Maybe I am just imagining things. But a lot of times GUIs are just graphical abstractions of TUIs. It is cruft that makes things visually easier and more appealing. That does not stop people from mastering TUIs and unlocking extra potential as they typically offer much deeper customization.

Once you go down this path, it is hard to go back. Very few tasks, apart from things like Photoshop and Revit, really require me to be at a GUI these days. And with MCP a lot of that is going away.

I have to agree with this. Ever since Claude Code released I always asked why it had to be a TUI but the sentiment I saw was that it was more powerful for some reason. I never bought that argument.

Now I use Codex UI which is miles better than any other tool I used.

I had the same feeling. I've since been using Claude Desktop and I have the convenience of the UI with Claude Code built right in. It even supports the same commands.

Sounds like you ought to try Claude Desktop.

I have mixed feelings in this debate, too. The big issue with GUIs is that they’ve become so bloated, especially as the default framework is now often electron apps. Web based frameworks tend to start keeling when large amounts of data need to be handled in the DOM, etc. When I use slack and discord, I sigh when I start seeing UI rendering lag when I switch channels and projects.

Though there’s been some recent progress in alternative models, the fact is native frameworks have some catching up to do. Some in particular (SwiftUI) are downright awful

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