[slightwinder]

> Looking at Docker CLI, there are like a bazillion commands and it takes forever to read through the docs to find out what exactly to use.

Is this really a problem of CLI or just an example of a complex application? If we take for example something like excel or photoshop, then you can't easily figure what to do, even if the doc is directly embedded inside the UI.

> Back to discoverability, is there a way to make CLI "more discoverable"? Reading the man page doesn't count.

Why? It's an additional step, but can count as basic knowledge, similar to how someone needs to know how a mouse works and what the buttons do, before they can start using a GUI.

> Like can we combine the advantages of CLI with the discoverability of GUIs?

No, the moment you embedd the discoverabilty of GUI it stops being a CLI. TUI exist, and they do offer the same elements as GUI, just with less flexibility because text and so. But TUI serves a different purpose. You can't automate spatial interfaces as you can automate a cli. You need a dedicated way for allowing this, which is the main reason why CLI is so popular.

What you could do is defining many many APIs and protocols and guidelines, then define your interface in some generic way which allows you to automatic spin out a discoverable interface as also a useful automation-interface. But who wants that? That is extra work.

[jakear]

The hundreds of millions of people that use excel with limited to no training would likely beg to differ with the proposition that it isn’t discoverable. I’ve never taken an excel class or read basic excel docs, yet I know how to do basic excel things. That’s literally impossible in a CLI.

Similarly, how many people have trouble saving and quitting a word document? What about vim?

[gindely]

I have trouble saving a word document nowadays, since they close the document when you want to save or print. (You press file, and now the document has been closed and replaced by some menu. I do not know if my actions will apply to the document that I had had open before the program helpfully closed it and makes me feel very uncertain. I do not like to use Word for this reason. It is completely unfathomable to me why of all menus, the File menu is the menu that closes your document. I thought it should be the one to help you interact with it most.)

[frosted-flakes]

The File menu doesn't close the document, it just covers it. That's why it's terrible, and I don't know why they ever introduced it when Word 2007 already had a perfect solution. Word 2007 had a small menu exactly like File Explorer and Paint that was actually usable and didn't change the context.

[slightwinder]

So the first app you ever used in your life was excel and nobody ever explained you it's purpose? How did you ever learn how the mouse works?

[Firadeoclus]

> No, the moment you embedd the discoverabilty of GUI it stops being a CLI. TUI exist, and they do offer the same elements as GUI, just with less flexibility because text and so. But TUI serves a different purpose. You can't automate spatial interfaces as you can automate a cli. You need a dedicated way for allowing this, which is the main reason why CLI is so popular.

A command line interface can do with very little screen real estate. There's no reason GUI and command line can't coexist, with everything you do in the GUI immediately being reflected in the command line, and vice versa. This combines the context visibility and flexibility of a GUI with automatability and composability of a CLI. And you learn both at the same time.

[funcDropShadow]

> No, the moment you embedd the discoverabilty of GUI it stops being a CLI.

That statement is falsified by the advent of programmable completions. Nothing stops us from integrating context sensitive help into the shell completion mechanism. The shell could display a help text next to each item of a completion list, or you could press keyboard shortcut to get help to the command your cursor is positioned on. shellcheck could highlight a bash command while you are typing it. All that would not change the fact that a shell is a CLI.

[slightwinder]

Completions are very limited in their surface. And you still need to learn where to start to get the completion.