The terminal is keystroke-driven. It's character-selectable. It's reliable in a way that the GUI is not. When I drop frames, I can still enter the commands to rescue myself with some assurance they'll be interpreted, eventually.

I agree, a REPL isn't Unixy in the streams of text kind of way... or is it?

> The question is - why do we still need the terminal abstraction at all?

Because nobody is willing to put in the work to create a GUI toolkit that doesn't suck ass.

It's not that people want the "terminal abstraction". What people want is "Put <thing> on screen without me needing a PhD in graphics programming." That's why the dominant desktop interface paradigms have become TUIs and a Browser-In-A-Trenchcoat.

I would argue that a proper REPL is much better.

That’s what I came here to ask. Their demo looks like Compiz back in the day: ok, cool, you have 3d effects, but… why? What does it do for me?

Compiz 3d effects were ultimately a useless gimmick and I predict this is too.