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Why I Prefer CLI and TUI over GUI - alavi.me
(alavi.me)
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this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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I’d say vi is in a fuzzy grey area below a tui. It’s more than a cli but shares a lot with cli programs; it pretty much has its own command line built in. At the same time it has nothing like dialog box or menus like normal tui programs.
Personally, I feel that if it uses control characters to update the screen in previous positions, altering the scroll buffer, moving beyond where the cursor is and redrawing the screen, then it's a TUI.
CLI programs only output plain text in a stream, using just control characters for coloring and formatting, and if they do any re-drawing it's only for the current line (eg. progressbars and so).
So.. even something like
lessis a TUI program.. but things likemoreorsedwould be CLI programs.Fair enough. I’d never consider less to be a TUI program.