Unix shell - We can do better now
summary
Shell UI is still stuck in a teleprinter model despite cursor-addressable terminals since vt52 (1974/75). Claim: make most of the wall of text interactive by exposing semantic objects on screen (files, AWS CodePipeline entries) tied to plugin handlers that supply menus and default actions. Interactions become semantic record/replay (recorded as "pipeline with status failed" or "instance with tag X" rather than literal IDs). A shell project began in 2013 to explore this; effort parallels building command completions, not a massive new class of work.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (12)
- 0:00intro
- 0:22preamble
- 0:38about me
- 0:54what's wrong with the unix shell?
- 1:55user interface
- 2:35how we got here?
- 5:49"interactive shell"
- 6:34objects on screen
- 7:18plugins
- 8:08record / replay
- 10:30how?
- 12:10ui vision summary
