Yeah GUI development isn't easy or straightforward. Thats why there are UI/UX engineers whose sole job is to design and create simple and easy to use interfaces. And they get paid big money to do it too.

If those programmers making ultra specialized software were to waste their time making a GUI, they would never finish the project or would require funding of some sort.

They always fall back on the position of "well, I developed this shit for free, for your ungrateful ass. So you can build your own fucking GUI."

But the thing about that is...no. And fuck you.

Okay, but consider this: yes.

People who do things they like for free are called "hobbyists". These hobbyists, unsurprisingly, only do what they want to do. And sometimes they don't want to make a GUI.

The fact that they share the results of their hobby for free at all is just a bonus.

counterpoint: making guis is way more of a pain in the ass than you are giving it credit for, and there are plenty of use cases for software that don't need a gui.

Upvote for solid unpopular opinion post. Also a fairly entertaining rant.

They always fall back on the position of "well, I developed this shit for free, for your ungrateful ass. So you can build your own fucking GUI."

But the thing about that is...no. And fuck you. I shouldn't have to be two-thirds of a fucking developer, in order to use the fucking software.

This took it from being "unpopular opinion" to "I'm just a fucking asshole and my opinion doesn't matter."

Or in other words, fuck you, you ungrateful cunt.

The dev making the ceramic stress testing whatchamawhatsit probably has zero skills in making a GUI. The next thing you'd be complaining about is that there's some bug in the GUI, because you're a complete moron and keep doing something stupid. Something the dev didn't ever think someone would do, because they're not a moron, and don't think like one.

They're making the tool because they have a passion for whatever it is they have a passion for. Not because theyre trying to appease your moronic simple mind.

If you're so passionate about GUIs, learn to make a fucking GUI for a command line tool. You fucking tool.

If you can figure out how to simulate molecules, or draw 3D stereograms, or translate hieroglyphics, or any other RIDICULOUSLY COMPLICATED SHIT, making a graphical user interface should be nothing to you. You should be able to do it in a fucking afternoon.

In a word, no. Being able to build an engine doesn't mean you know the first thing about how to design a car. It's a totally different skill set.

I work with PhDs who code all sort of amazing physics engines and then I design the GUI apps around them. That's a full-time job right there (I'm living proof of it), and I wouldn't expect them to understand it any more than they would expect me to understand all the physics.

When you write some sort of procedural tool, you are in complete control of the program flow from start to finish. In a GUI app, the user is in control most of the time. That's awesome if you're the user, but it means a lot more what-if scenarios you have to account for, since users are notoriously unpredictable. And if the task your command line was performing takes an appreciable length of time, you need to spawn it off into separate threads or subprocesses and worry about all the synchronization logic you must get right. This is a programming minefield for anyone who has done it, especially when you need said threads to interact with the GUI, as GUI frameworks are notoriously not thread-safe.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is designing and implementing GUIs is non-trivial, unless maybe you just want something like an installer wizard that runs you through 10 dialogs to gather info for a command line and then runs it.

Conversely, I think that every program should have a way to operate it from the command line and the GUI can just needlessly get in the way a lot of the time `¯_(ツ)_/¯
You write a command once and you can do whatever you want with it, repeatably, forever. It's fantastic! You can then pipe the results into a completely different program all without needing to do much of anything! Want to run it on a schedule? Easy! Want to send the exact parameters you used to someone else? Easy! Want to copy and paste the exact output? Easy! Want to get a daily email with the results? Easy!
Some things are better with a GUI, but, plenty don't need it.
With all that said, I understand why a dev who didn't build their program with CLI in mind wouldn't want to go in afterwards and add it in, especially if they don't use/like CLI interfaces.

I've seen similar arguments to yours that every program should have be packaged as an exe, because fuck those fucking programmers thinking I should need to install python to make their shitty programs work. The devs are like "I don't use Windows and wouldn't even know how to package it as an exe and even then, I wouldn't even be able to test that it works, python just works for everyone" and then the guy just continues to go off on a similar rant to yours about how ridiculous this is.

Besides, even if it had a GUI, the complaint would be "why don't they make their software do the things that people want it to do‽‽‽" and then going off about how easy this {insanely complicated thing} would be to add in and EVERYONE {nope, just you} needs this function in order for this software to be useful and the dev is just a POS for not adding it.

Like, I get your point if you're paying for software that doesn't make it clear it doesn't have a GUI, but if you're just on github using someone elses software that they made for themselves and thought other people might like, why are you bitching? Just move on to another piece of software that can do what you want and has a GUI (I'm going to guess you can't/won't because those cost money and you wouldn't be able to belittle and harass the actual software creators and that's half the fun for you).

What if the GUI was just another terminal emulator?

Congrats on the true unpopular opinion lol.

I'll add one thing that I don't think has been said, adding gui adds a lot to the dependencies and complexity of maintaining a program. Keeping it in the cli keeps the size of the program down, and ensures it will work longer and on more devices since it's dependent on less libraries that could change.

Because of that, if a cli program gets a gui it's usually a separate project, like how yt-dlp has front-ends like this.

I upvoted this because it's the point of the sub. Some people like terminal apps, most open source programs are initially created for personal use and then shared to others. GUI can be the hardest, buggiest part of an application and rarely teaches the programmer anything. I think you should try to make one ;)

GUIs are way more complicated than you imagine, and require a completely different set of skills than developing the sort of program you mentioned.
If you want a nice, easy to use and well supported software, then pay for it and hold whoever you're paying accountable for making it user-friendly. If whatever you are using is free open source software, then that's literally !choosingbeggars

If you really think it's something that can be built in an afternoon, feel free to commission a freelancer to make the GUI for you or see if the repository owner is accepting any sort of bounties/commissions. How expensive could an afternoon's worth of work be?

By all means, provide a GUI.

But being able to do it all from the command line means you can pipe the output of another program directly into your program, and then take that output and feed it into yet another.

The program you describe could be slotted into the control systems of the kiln, cooling, and tempering ovens.

GUIs break that connection. As soon as you start using a GUI, the ability to automatically pipe outputs to inputs is broken. The user is now the link between the programs, manually transferring data between them that could be performed automatically.

All the rest of us, who aren't programmers? We envy programmers, and their ability to really connect with computers, on that deep logic level.

A good GUI will leave the command line visible, and interact able, so that the user can see the program's input and output syntax, and gain that sense of "connection". A good GUI will teach the command line, so that by merely using two programs, the user learns what they need to connect them together.

I actually kinda agree with this.

Even if a commandline tool has more power, utility and flexibility than a gui tool, guis let you drill down into the core workflow of what your software is meant to do. At a minimum, it lets you segment what your regular users are expected to do from what your power users could use your software to do.

Additionally, if you intend for your software to be used by non-software adjacent users, a commandline interface is just asking for people to get lost/confused.

At work, we use ROS on some of our systems and while the commandline tools are simple to someone who works in the ecosystem, knowing what to look at when things go wrong is tricky.

Even a simple gui in tkinter that shows statuses or shows a list of topics and lets you print them out is leagues above the commandline when it comes to how much I need to be involved in other peoples' problems.

It is a luxury to be knowledgeable in software concepts and I think software devs/power users forget that often.

This software is not for you. It's for the author. It's in furtherance of their research, or their career, or their interests. It is only incidentally available to you.

That's it, that's the whole story. You get a GUI if the authors wanted there to be a GUI.

If you join a community around the product - which would require being nice, willing to engage, understand, not make demands - you might be able to give feedback and occasionally help steer the direction of the product.

I know. Its like these foundation guys. Learn to build the whole fucking house if your serious about being in construction!!!

Not all end-users are the same though. Clearly, you are not in the target user group for this software. If a GUI was that sought after, someone could create that as a standalone project. Upvoted for the genuine unpopular opinion

I'm a senior software dev and have built a shitload of tools and scripts that are command line only. I've been told that I'm a really great developer, and I have a knack for figuring things out, even when there's no documentation.

For the life of me, I absolutely cannot wrap my head around frontend shit. Like, I can do markdown just fine. HTML? CSS? Any of the popular frontend UI frameworks? I just seem to have some sort of conceptual and motivational block that prevents me from figuring out how to make those accursed fucking frontends.

It's such a different form of software development. I wish I could wrap my head around it, but I've accept that I'm not ever going to be a frontend dev. I just write server side stuff and scripts. I apologize if you ever have to use my software :(

GUI components aren't (usually) interoperable, with other programs, they aren't flexible, and they aren't scriptable at scale. They are good for new people and laypeople, but they are hard to write (lots of requirements for input validation) and you have to prescribe a specific workflow. I would argue after being on both ends of the discussion that the one guy you DEFINITELY don't want to write a UI for a complex scientific program is the guy who wrote the program: it means to use it he expects you to think like him.

I would suggest the other perspective: any academic or research tool that DOESNT have CLI parity available alongside a GUI (if it has one) shouldn't be taken seriously.

I don't have experience to add to the discussion, but it seems like this is a genuinely unpopular opinion from the comments, so it gets my upvote

Nope, don't agree. I definitely write software, but the UI for the end user is (usually) exactly one button. What would I need an GUI for?

Idk man. Neofetch is pretty good and that doesn't use a GUI.

Eventually AI will just generate a GUI for you. In the meantime, ShellGPT will write the shell commands for you. But for the most part, GUIs are a weird luxury and you should just learn some bash, it’ll make you feel better!

If you mod Skyrim or Fallout: chances are you use the Script Extender... Which runs in a cmdline window without a GUI.