[ahpook]

Thanks for the feedback!

Interesting point about "first 15 minutes" - the service (and CLI) we're building will probably guide users into the CLI experience during that first ... maybe first 30-60 minutes, rather than 15, but _really_ early on as they get familiar with it.

From a UX standpoint, that discoverability you describe with the GUI is really about the affordances the user can discern with from the baseline state. That is, the 'rotate' button is visible without the user having to do any discovery at all, it's just _there_. What would the CLI equivalent be - I think part of it is the autocompletion scripts that bash/zsh let programs drop in to the `completions` directory so `command <TAB>` shows you all the possible next steps...? Worth thinking about.

[sramsay]

Autocompletion probably has to be part of the solution. In some ways, I feel like we want CLIs to get smarter in the way that compilers have gotten smarter. "Did you mean?" is another really nice UI hack.

What frustrates me is that CLIs are not really part of the "design" conversation in computing at all. I feel like GUIs have so taken over, that no one is even interested anymore in figuring out how to create great language-based interfaces (which is really what CLIs are, I think).

When I say "no one," I mean the professional UI/UX crowd -- who very often come up with miraculous ideas with GUIs. It would be great to see some of that energy being brought to bear on text-based systems.

P.S. I'm amazed this didn't take off on HN!

[ahpook]

Well, there are some people doing UX work in this area but it's under appreciated, and I agree that it's largely programmers who give a sh!t about design rather than the other way around.

I was really expecting, given the strong opinions people here have about all things design related, that there'd be some spicy takes :D

But I super appreciate your feedback, thank you!