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nothing is stopping gui programs from using keyboard shortcuts though. vs code and emacs use them to great effect. and there’s no quirks with the alt key.


As I said though, there are only so many keys on a keyboard, and only so many combinations one can learn, which is why command palette style interfaces have become so popular.

In VSCode there are probably ~1000 actions I can perform, and maybe ~50 keyboard shortcuts that I use, but I can still access all those actions quickly and fairly efficiently. This shows the value of command line interfaces.


OS integration is critical when it comes to keyboard shortcuts, especially for non-Web where there's expectations set by the shell (TUI) or the GUI.


But if you’re building an interactive tool and choosing between a gui and a tui, you could just build a gui with a command palette.


My point is not that terminals themselves are good, but that there's clearly value in a terminal-style interface where commands are input instead of buttons clicked.

The original comment was suggesting that the value was outdated, but I think command palettes are a good counter-example.




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