
“Real developers don't use UIs”: The value of web UIs for CLI-oriented users - bulletsvshumans
https://medium.com/design-ibm/real-developers-dont-use-uis-daea7404fb4e
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thothsscribe
That was a well written and entertaining article. A bit long for my taste and
I feel like it could have been said in fewer words, but like I mentioned, it
was entertaining.

What this makes me wonder is how much effort should go into each User
Interface. You describe a web GUI (in this domain) to be a good place for
people to learn about something new and maybe kick the tires. It can also
speed up their interactions via visual tricks. However, you mention that
productive, at scale, and "more money" use occurs more in the CLI. Does that
mean companies should make their UI better at educating the CLI and worry less
about doing things in it and make the CLI be the encouraged primary form of
"Doing"?

On top of that, making a GUI requires front end/backend development, UX,
visual, research, and a whole lot of time while a CLI requires UX (maybe) and
backend development and is overall simpler. I feel like the positives and
negatives described in this article don't really support making a UI do
anything more than discovery and education on the CLI. And CLI are finally
attempting UX improvements like your example from Yeoman. They are taking the
best bits from the Usability of GUI (color, shapes, iconography,
recommendations, etc)and putting them in the CLI. Does that diminish the
relevance beyond education and marketing of a GUI in this domain even further?

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ljw1001
>making a GUI requires front end/backend development, UX, visual, research,

Doing a CLI also requires, at least, back-end development and research. Doing
a decent one requires a tremendous focus on UX.

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thothsscribe
Definitely back-end and it is exciting to see all that UX is bringing to CLIs,
but relative to a full front end GUI it is much more straight forward. (Not to
discount the hard work CLI developers do since it is still plenty complex)

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eschaton
Kind of a turn-off that it jumps immediately from CLI to web UI, without even
considering native UI. Macintosh developers worked quite effectively for
almost two decades without any sort of standard, out-of-the-box command line
environment; sure some used Macintosh Programmer’s Workshop, but the vast
majority lived in IDEs like THINK Lightspeed Pascal and C (later Symantec
THINK Pascal and C) and Metrowerks CodeWarrior, and were extremely satisfied
with their experience.

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keslert
The article is a beast but there is a lot of good information in there. I find
that I try to do as much as possible from the keys when I'm doing programming
related tasks. An IDE like vscode is a good mix of UI and CLI for me.

That being said, I've been excited in the past seeing a new take on IDE's with
things like LightTable (I'm not positive that's the name...) which have pushed
the needle even further on the UI/CLI balance.

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jbfr
There's a ton of great info packed into this article. It's definitely been a
struggle over the years to find a balance between when to prioritize CLI over
UI development for Cloud services, but I think they arrived at a sweet spot
when it comes to building complementary experiences that help one out where it
is most appropriate.

Disclaimer: I work for IBM Cloud

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rvennam
I used to work on a product UI that provided the equivalent CLI command for
every action you perform in the UI. Use the UI to learn the CLI -
complementary experience.

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wilshire005
I always feel like CLI is for power user's for people that already know what
they are trying to accomplish and want to batch together scripts to do it. A
UI is better for beginner user's to become familiar with a products
functioning.

From a design perspective I feel like the CLI is far too often forgotten.

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sunstone
If we're talking about the crappy web browser ssh interface to GCE instances
then yeah, it really sucks.

