[boterpoes]

For me personally, it also has something to do with TUIs feeling more 'snappy' and reliable than many GUIs. For example, when I'm scrolling in Slack to get to previous messages, I'm often looking at blank space while messages load. Or when I open a search engine in Safari, often I cannot type in the search box without clicking on it first. Or in a JetBrains IDE I try to type code but the file navigator still has focus and now I'm using the 'file search' modus which I did not intend to use. I almost never have these issues with TUIs. They're mostly fast and behave like I expect. Can't think of how to explain this better right now.

In theory I like GUIs better as you can do a lot more with them, but they disappoint me so often that I often prefer a TUI (or a commandline tool).

[pjc50]

I think this isn't due to the TUI itself (and this one isn't text, it has images in!) but downstream of a whole load of other choices. You rarely have this with game UIs, for example.

It's not just the use of immediate mode, but a whole stack of design decisions to prioritize snappiness.

[Vampiero]

Consider how quickly conhost.exe starts compared to the new cmd.exe

Most of it is because of ancillary stuff and heavy dependencies.

[marginalia_nu]

Modern GUI frameworks are a bit of a dumpster fire. They're unresponsive mess with poor contrast, frequently based around elements designed for a 7" touch screen[1], despite primarily being used with mouse and keyboard input and a full sized monitor.

[1] Like hamburger menus. These make zero sense in a desktop GUI. They make perfect sense on a small vertical screen, but horizontal screen space is just not a scarce commodity on a 27" screen. All these things accomplish is making a button that's harder to accurately click.