Reinventing the CLI with Go
summary
Reinvents the CLI from machine-first to human-first, arguing for explicit success/failure signals, concise output, color with accessibility and rewritten errors; shows working examples: generated scaffolding from Cobra, graceful signal handling code for Control-C, interactive prompts wired to structs via Survey, and a live terminal dashboard with widgets and resizing via Termdash. Demo code includes manpage generation, sensible exit codes, and guidance on flags vs arguments so CLIs are robust and empathic.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00Introduction and context
- 1:57What is a CLI?
- 5:26Why build CLI tools with Go
- 7:37CLI design philosophy
- 11:57Input design and syntax
- 14:50Go CLI implementation
- 16:49Interactivity and tools
- 20:40Output and error handling
- 23:06Documentation and conclusion
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