I hope vibecoding doesn't mean the concept of contributing upstream gets lost. At least some of this (mouse clicking) would have been a great upstream contribution instead of rewrite.
I wish we had a "cool" GUI toolkit. GUIs are way better at this stuff. Adding point and click is so close to being a GUI, the only possible reason this is a TUI is fashion.
Idk if you are managing k8s stuff you are probably in a terminal already. Staying in a terminal is nice. Plus having persistent multiplexer sessions is a big deal in locked down corporate environments.
Most common things power users seem to want from TUIs on desktop:
- Easy efficient remote access. Pixel streaming and things like GTK Broadway are out. Needs a proper protocol/standard that would send styling-neutral primitives (and that is not X11 forwarding), and the entire toolkit architecture built around that. Something like SPICE/QXL but more semantics-aware? Not sure, might be too low level and chatty.
- Staying in the terminal. This is a matter of window management, though a toolkit can offer good defaults so this doesn't feel janky.
- Keyboard-first. Trivial. "GUI is for filthy mouse casuals" is a ludicrous idea.
- Low bloat. Web and things like GTK Broadway are out.
I haven't seen two similar opinions on actual architecture and stack, however being available in Rust will be a great start.
How are GUIs "way better at this stuff"? I can't see it, but would like to understand how you feel that a GUI can improve on the management of automated processes at scale.
Just one example of the top of my head: filter by labels, sort by name, select a few pods using ctrl+click, view logs. GUIs were super quick at this sort of stuff in the 90s. I use kubectl myself, but when I see stuff like this it really seems like people just want GUIs again.
There's two different levels to this imho, a tui is usually still a non-bloated self-contained binary that can run on windowless server envirorments just fine.
TUIs can have GUI like affordances UX/UI wise regardless of if they use the terminal as the contract or a window server/gui lib
The code generated by Claude is fully under my control, and I make sure it works exactly as I intend. I could have hidden this by committing it myself, but I choose to acknowledge that I had Claude's help
It’s not your fault. The problem is now that my mother in law can vibe code a complete operating system, I cannot distinguish quality from shit any more. And the last few OSS projects that I tried that had the Claude icon where shit and breaking in many ways.
It's kinda like eternal September but for software engineering. There was a time that just being on the internet, having an email address, etc. was a signal that indicated a level of technical proficiency. Now everyone has that connectivity, it doesn't mean anything anymore.
I think your prior assumption that all OSS projects had a degree of quality is where your problem is. But I get it.
We’ve had low quality code for as long as we’ve had programmable machines. I’ve seen a lot of manually written bad code well before LLMs took over. Nowadays, I primarily look at how long a repo has been around and how active it is. A repo that has consistent activity is probably going to be a higher quality one. Even better if I can follow PRs to see how the code base is evolving.
I will admit it’s become more difficult to tell low quality git repos from higher quality ones. Missing files or incomplete README files are a thing of the past. Claude is very good at filling in the gaps to make all repos at least appear respectable.
The Claude-generated README doesn't inspire confidence in that. I believe you checked all the code, but a lot of people are going to see that README and not give the project a second chance.
But now other people's code is just a starting point for me forking an app to do exactly what I want it to - it's inspiration because code is cheap.
Of course for larger projects we will still need solid components underlying them, but what you're really talking about is just maturity - it's very easy to produce a lot of output now but you can't replace actual history or having more then exactly 1 maintainer.
As a total side tangent, but I really like the following flow: focus follows mouse but focus doesn't raise the window, clicking on the top bar, or Win+Click raises it (notice how neither of these 2 results in an interaction).
Unfortunately, of the popular DE's, this is only supported in Xfce (?), and it's not supported in Windows or macOS afaik.
I don't care about clicking into the terminal. I don't understand why people do this more and more.
You just need to use your keyboard shortcuts correctly and navigate the tmux/kitty session as it's intended to.
See that's all a matter of workflow? You don't understand it because it's just not for you
Actually, I’d really like to know the answer to this. I’m not a fan of clickable TUIs. Mouse events in my terminal are one of the banes of my existence.
But, if they are more popular with others, that would be helpful to know.
It might be different if these things leaned a little bit into acme - or at least had some justification for what was similar and what was difficult [hah, Freudian autocorrect. Meant: different]. Like; do you want to be a powerful text-oriented tool, or just a mostly-dumb print out?
There are reasons for both - but ignorance shouldn't be one.
A clickable TUI is contrarian to why I use most CLI tools. Neat that they could build this, though, because it suits their needs.
I'm fine with K9s and lazygit key-driven interfaces.
I guess one thing that's good about a clickable TUI is that maybe it's easier to approach for some, wihtout releasing yet another memory hog Electron App?
Some of us enjoy working entirely in the terminal. It’s OK not to enjoy that, but I assure you, I am far more productive in tmux + nvim than in, say, VSCode.
I'm really surprised that "clickable tui" is grinding so many gears here. I've been using Linux for over 20 years. I love a good ol TUI. But nothing about clickability precludes a TUI from being useful. I love mouse support in tmux, for instance. I can shift-arrow my way around windows but I can also just click one (or tap one, if one a touch device). I do this all the time when controlling tmux from my iPhone. Why is this such a bad thing? It makes zero sense. Judge this tool on its merits of being a TUI for interacting with Kubernetes... not because it allows mouse input.
advisedwang | 3 hours ago
globular-toast | 3 hours ago
esafak | 3 hours ago
jswelker | 3 hours ago
I appreciate the tui.
orbital-decay | 3 hours ago
_def | 3 hours ago
orbital-decay | 2 hours ago
- Easy efficient remote access. Pixel streaming and things like GTK Broadway are out. Needs a proper protocol/standard that would send styling-neutral primitives (and that is not X11 forwarding), and the entire toolkit architecture built around that. Something like SPICE/QXL but more semantics-aware? Not sure, might be too low level and chatty.
- Staying in the terminal. This is a matter of window management, though a toolkit can offer good defaults so this doesn't feel janky.
- Keyboard-first. Trivial. "GUI is for filthy mouse casuals" is a ludicrous idea.
- Low bloat. Web and things like GTK Broadway are out.
I haven't seen two similar opinions on actual architecture and stack, however being available in Rust will be a great start.
bijowo1676 | 3 hours ago
we need more experiments with X11 interfaces
ellg | 3 hours ago
Imgui is also good for this
jprd | 3 hours ago
globular-toast | an hour ago
tough | 37 minutes ago
TUIs can have GUI like affordances UX/UI wise regardless of if they use the terminal as the contract or a window server/gui lib
frevib | 3 hours ago
[OP] pierreneter | 3 hours ago
frevib | 3 hours ago
Infernal | 2 hours ago
Same concept, but github repos now.
mbreese | an hour ago
We’ve had low quality code for as long as we’ve had programmable machines. I’ve seen a lot of manually written bad code well before LLMs took over. Nowadays, I primarily look at how long a repo has been around and how active it is. A repo that has consistent activity is probably going to be a higher quality one. Even better if I can follow PRs to see how the code base is evolving.
I will admit it’s become more difficult to tell low quality git repos from higher quality ones. Missing files or incomplete README files are a thing of the past. Claude is very good at filling in the gaps to make all repos at least appear respectable.
0xCMP | 2 hours ago
darklinear | 2 hours ago
geraneum | an hour ago
I appreciate the effort. May I ask how do you tackle this?
XorNot | 2 hours ago
But now other people's code is just a starting point for me forking an app to do exactly what I want it to - it's inspiration because code is cheap.
Of course for larger projects we will still need solid components underlying them, but what you're really talking about is just maturity - it's very easy to produce a lot of output now but you can't replace actual history or having more then exactly 1 maintainer.
bearjaws | 3 hours ago
When Claude added it, I immediately hated it since you click into the terminal and accidentally click something.
keybrd-intrrpt | 3 hours ago
I don't mind something that requires a modifier key like Shift+click to follow a URL
But so many times now I'll click to get focus and now that's selected some option or opened some pane.
If I wanted that, I'd use the Claude Desktop app!
serbuvlad | 2 hours ago
Unfortunately, of the popular DE's, this is only supported in Xfce (?), and it's not supported in Windows or macOS afaik.
boredatoms | 3 hours ago
Or can we do it with a cli wrapper process?
gchamonlive | 2 hours ago
NamlchakKhandro | an hour ago
mbreese | an hour ago
Actually, I’d really like to know the answer to this. I’m not a fan of clickable TUIs. Mouse events in my terminal are one of the banes of my existence.
But, if they are more popular with others, that would be helpful to know.
fhn | 16 minutes ago
e12e | an hour ago
There are reasons for both - but ignorance shouldn't be one.
https://9p.io/wiki/plan9/Using_acme/index.html
fragmede | 3 hours ago
Why is this a good thing? Have a help you your access via ? and document what the keys are. Don't dumb the interface down.
dropbox_miner | 3 hours ago
tough | 36 minutes ago
taude | 3 hours ago
I'm fine with K9s and lazygit key-driven interfaces.
I guess one thing that's good about a clickable TUI is that maybe it's easier to approach for some, wihtout releasing yet another memory hog Electron App?
XorNot | 2 hours ago
Of course with all the running around with AI programming, it would be nice if we could task sometime to making remote desktop not suck on Linux.
Atotalnoob | 35 minutes ago
Claude code uses react, iirc
mococa | 3 hours ago
bornpsy | 3 hours ago
colesantiago | 2 hours ago
It seems we cannot move on from them and I think we should.
It is a shame because surely there must be something better than terminals and TUIs.
sgarland | 49 minutes ago
rdg42 | 2 hours ago
https://github.com/nklmilojevic/sofka
That's the actual k9s successor imho!
whalesalad | an hour ago
sa-code | an hour ago