CLIs are SO back

Where did the CLI come from?

Since the mid-1960s, with the advent of early computer systems, technologists have envisioned CLIs.

In those early days, systems lacked screens; interactions primarily involved typing commands, with results printed on paper.

Everything changed for the better with the rise of Unix and bash in the 1970s. CLIs became the primary way to interact with operating systems. In fact, GUIs didn’t emerge until the mid-1980s with the creation of X Windows by MIT.

More recently, major infrastructure companies like AWS, GCP, Azure, and other significant developer platforms have developed and maintained CLIs.

The technology that defines CLIs today has continually evolved, becoming increasingly interactive. This evolution has made using well-designed CLI apps a genuinely enjoyable experience.

Engineers often prefer CLIs today due to their efficiency. They can execute complex tasks quickly with typed commands and script repetitive actions. CLIs also enable engineers to build entire systems around command-line interactions.

Furthermore, CLIs, being fundamentally text-based and operating on structured commands with defined syntax, provide a significant advantage for the AI future we are building. AI agents are generally better suited for interacting with CLIs than GUIs, primarily due to the nature of these interfaces.

Despite the prevalence of GUIs, the power, flexibility, and efficiency of CLIs have ensured their continued importance in the computing landscape.

Like human engineers, AI agents can leverage the efficiency inherent in CLIs (due to strict command patterns) and their feedback loops. Feedback is crucial; if you make a mistake, you receive a clarifying error message. If you succeed, you receive a success message with options for the next steps.

AI agents can easily generate, recover from errors, and succeed within this pattern that CLIs employ.

Furthermore, agents and humans can build and execute scripts composed of various CLI commands, allowing them to perform complex and repetitive tasks efficiently without human intervention.

The future is bright for CLI users → both human and agentic!