alt Hacker NewsA chatbot is worse than a CLI app: a CLI app does exactly what you ask for, and has a manual documenting exactly what command do what, and the output is consistent, the same command does the same thing period.
A chatbot using an LLM of course not, it suffers from hallucinations, it may do what you want but there is a change it won't and you have to fight it to get the desired result.
Chatbots are far WORSE than traditional UI for everything. If some product has a chatbot functions it's the first thing I disable, if it's not possible to disable it, I avoid the product.
And GUI applications are typically preferred, at least for the normal people and not us nerds, to CLI applications, since you know people like moving a mouse and clicking on buttons (or tapping them on a touchscreen) that learning commands: a chatbot doesn't make the CLI experience less awful for the average user, and for the nerd user, he prefers to use the CLI directly (replace asking the chatbot with man or --help and you don't need to emit tons of CO2 and transmit your personal data to a datacenter on the other side of the world to do stuff you did with MS-DOS)
Replies
> a CLI app does exactly what you ask for, and has a manual documenting exactly what command do what
*a small percent of apps behave like this
> it may do what you want but there is a change it won't and you have to fight it to get the desired result
The vast majority of all software made in the last ten years falls into this category. This includes the goddamn operating system itself.
I don't think you're making the argument you think you're making.
>> Chatbots are far WORSE than traditional UI for everything. If some product has a chatbot functions it's the first thing I disable, if it's not possible to disable it, I avoid the product.
The chatbot we added to our B2B product is by far the most popular addition we've made this year. Our users are not tech-savvy, they use a lot of apps everyday and don't want to have to learn and keep up with just another UI. So they like being able to type their wants and needs in plain language (or speak it into their phone, if they are in the field) and get a plain language response back with embedded images and charts.
YMMV of course.
> a CLI app does exactly what you ask for, and has a manual documenting exactly what command do what, and the output is consistent, the same command does the same thing period
This is a very software-engineery point of view and totally false for the ordinary user. Heck, it is even false for me as a software engineer.
> since you know people like moving a mouse and clicking on buttons
No, they like well-designed user interfaces, and the UI design of a typical CLI is abysmal.