Post #3406263
2026-06-26 07:50 UTC
Thesis: The surge in popularity of TUIs is not because there's been a sudden interest in retro computing. They're popular because they're an easy way to get a cross platform UI in an app experience.
Antithesis: There are other - and better - ways to achieve this goal. A good cross-platform GUI toolkit gives you the same thing, while retaining the ability to do things like, say, display an *image* or a *line chart*.
A good cross-platform GUI toolkit can even output a TUI if you need that to access your app's UI over SSH.
Like, say, Toga: https://toga.beeware.org
Replies (2)
-
@glyph@mastodon.social 2026-06-27 05:41
@freakboy3742@cloudisland.nz @davidgerard@circumstances.run this is a synthesis, about a new wave of native apps, which I think means Toga is now a Synthwave UI framework
-
@webology@mastodon.social 2026-06-26 13:10
@freakboy3742@cloudisland.nz I agree that it has nothing to do with retro computing. TUI tooling has gotten really good, and no one has figured out a GUI pattern that works with how many of us drive LLMs. Eventually, a pattern will emerge, and it will be obvious what that looks like, but everything either resembled an IDE or an Email app, and we don't want or need that. There's a huge architectural difference, too. Many of us are running a TUI remotely, so it stays persistent, and we can be mobile.