I've always wondered if there were niches that some models are better at. I use them for software, electrical and mechanical engineering plus other things. What are some notable subject-specific differences you found?
Actually the popular harnesses achieve high cache rates, but probably the syntax and prompts are more verbose than they need to be. A simpler syntax is doable, but I found with more exotic architectures I end up with lower cache rates.
Why use Codex CLI if you can use the ChatGPT Linux app (which is a Codex GUI in all but name). Personally I weirdly got used to the terrible TUI stuff.
“ 39. Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words - but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.”
Perlis has an aphorism for this, as he does every important problem [0].
I love a GUI app but calling TUI usage "that" is utterly limiting and unfortunate to put it mildly. I moved entirely to CLI/TUI just because dumping notes, handoffs, anything, and everything I want even for a literally literary work (grammar etc; let alone coding/planning work) is infinitely better. Also, control edits/changes/shapes/etc better among many other things. GUI doesn't even come close (nope!). That' the reason I moved to almost 100% CLI/TUI.
You're a software engineer living in a middle of an AI revolution and you confuse what IS with what CAN BE? GUI can be good people just didn't do them because it took time and the foundation was shit (for the options that didn't take time). That all changes now when a new class of software can be generated with AI. Unfortunately the people generating software and their users still base the decision on what IS (with highly technical reasoning such as "infinitely better"). People literally have the power to define what IS these days. I've only recently switched from claude and codex cli to their respective apps and those apps while not the best gui apps, already infinitely better than tui. The tui is actually hurting my main usage of them which is controlling agent programmatically.
The only really point I'd give for TUI is compatibility. Running coding agent directly on android/ios is nice sometimes.
> That all changes now when a new class of software can be generated with AI.
All the AI-generated UIs I've seen have been very derivative, certainly not eliminating any of the disadvantages of typical GUI interfaces.
Realistically, the whole "overlapping windows" GUI model, and everything that derives from that, was a metaphor geared towards people who'd never seen a computer before. It fit the increasing consumer focus of computing interfaces. It's no wonder that technical people often prefer TUIs.
Maybe AI will bring real advancements in GUIs, but someone's still going to have to make it happen.
GUI is not just your "overlapping windows" straw man, it's interactivity, plus graphical display. Yes via a taxonomy hack TUI is not GUI and there are technical hacks that bring graphics to TUIs these days, but the point remains that we need complex (but not overlapping windows, sure!) interactivity and rich display capability.
That is what we need, and if you're making the argument that a terminal shell is the best place to provide them then I don't know what to say.
I'm pointing out that current GUIs are pretty primitive and haven't undergone much serious thought about functional improvement since Xerox PARC in the late 1970s, and that's why TUIs can still have an edge with technically-inclined people.
It's not that GUIs are inherently worse in principle, but in practice they often are.
The point about overlapping windows is that that "desktop" model permeates the thinking about GUI design, but it's fundamentally limiting and misguided.
> we need complex (but not overlapping windows, sure!) interactivity and rich display capability.
Despite the capitals and trying to come across as someone who SEES "what is COMING" (yay!), you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
No wait, I will leave you with a hint. Do whatever you wish to do with that.
Hint: So, you probably want me to use a toolset which is incredibly inferior, as of today, for "me/my usage", just because you feel "IT CAN BE". Right.
This is not about vision or anything like that it's about thinking like actual engineers and understand that what accidentally IS will always be inferior to what is designated to (can) be. TUIs will always be a hack and good by accident.
For me it's indeed around COVID where my habits changed. That deserves more attention indeed. Something about the vibe changed. Could be just me, and could be just a coincidence that is happened around COVID. But it's worth considering.
I'd be interested to see how the drop correlates with pets. We got a dog during COVID, she acclimated to a house which never has guests. Now she can't handle guests. Shame on us, perhaps, but anyway there it is.
Where I'm from religious observance went down considerably and permanently - it was declining before the pandemic, but it reached a tipping point only in the early 20s.
Apparently everyone was attending mass largely because everyone else was.
I don't know if it was me getting older, or caring less about startup scene but I agree, when Meetups started up again it wasn't as fun to stay up late and get together masked up to listen to someone talk about a basic web app or api. The vibes might have come back now that we're not masking, but it's a bigger commitment for me now to go in every week. I also feel like groups put a lot of content upfront to talk about their agenda and org functions when it used to be more of a "you're at the [topic] meeting, here's what we have for you today".
the oil oligarchs lose political control the bigger the reserves are. By emptying it, they have guaranteed their political power not just on Trump but for years to come
Why not? They get profits, he gets to come back to power. Him being in power affords a streamlined approach to things like regime change in extraction targets like Venezuela.
I've always wondered if there were niches that some models are better at. I use them for software, electrical and mechanical engineering plus other things. What are some notable subject-specific differences you found?
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