Over the past few years, it seems like the rate at which new CLI tools are being written has picked back up again, accelerating after seeing relatively little activity between ~1995 and ~2015. I’d like to talk about this trend I’ve noticed, where people are rewriting and rethinking staples of the command line interface, why I think this trend might be happening, and why I think this trend is a good thing.

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In recent years, there's been a resurgence in the development of command line interface (CLI) tools, driven by advancements in terminal capabilities and user demands for improved usability. This trend is characterized by rethinking and reinventing long-standing tools to offer better out-of-the-box experiences, more helpful error messages, and streamlined common use cases. The article discusses the historical development of CLI tools, lessons learned over decades, and the impact of modern programming languages like Rust and Go in this renaissance.

The Modern CLI Renaissance

The final list of tools is great!

The huge end list is awesome to quickly check the different projects!

Thanks for the article! I’ve got a link to <a href="https://yazi-rs.github.io/docs/installation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">yazi File Manager</a> from there, and I think this will turn out to be one of my greatest friends from now on!