Ask HN: My family business runs on a 1993-era text-based-UI (TUI). Anybody else?

Hacker News Discussion ↗

Where TUIs Still Run Critical Work

  • Commenters report TUIs still active in retail (big-box chains, warehouse clubs, specialty stores, restaurants/bars), logistics and trucking, lumberyards, agriculture equipment service, utilities, insurance, banking, telecom, medical/billing, postal systems, universities/libraries, and manufacturing/ERP.
  • Many run on AS/400, mainframes, HP3000, AIX/Unix, SCO, Pick, MUMPS, COBOL, xBase (dBase/FoxPro/Clipper), and even 80s home computers under emulation or original hardware.

Why Businesses Keep TUIs

  • Core reasons: reliability, low operating cost, and the risk/expense of migration from heavily customized, poorly documented legacy logic.
  • For many SMBs, the existing system “does everything we need,” and rewriting would not clearly pay off.
  • Hardware is often virtualized/emulated instead of replaced, extending life further.

Efficiency, Speed, and UX Characteristics

  • Strong consensus that well-designed TUIs are extremely fast:
    • Keyboard-only control, no mouse travel.
    • Fixed layouts with no scrolling, so information always appears in the same place.
    • Input buffering/type-ahead lets expert users enter multiple screens of actions before the system finishes drawing.
    • Stable hotkeys and menus allow deep muscle memory; operators can process orders in real time as customers speak.
  • Several recount major productivity drops when TUI systems were replaced by “modern” GUI/web front-ends.

Training, Labor, and Discoverability

  • TUIs are repeatedly compared to musical instruments or Vim: steep initial learning curve, very high ceiling.
  • Works best where employees stay long and perform repetitive domain-specific workflows.
  • Some argue today’s higher turnover and casual/consumer users push toward GUIs with better discoverability and less training.

Arguments for Modern GUIs/Web UIs

  • Some point out that GUIs can be just as keyboard-centric and fast, but rarely are designed that way; modern UX often prioritizes aesthetics, marketing, and developer convenience over efficiency.
  • Others are skeptical of the “perfectly tuned old TUI” narrative, noting that many such systems are unmaintained, bug-ridden, and effectively held together by user workarounds.

Modernization Patterns and Tools

  • Common strategies: wrap TUIs with web/GUI shells, expose APIs, scrape via terminal emulators/SendKeys, or replicate TUI behavior in web SPAs.
  • Several mention modern TUI frameworks (for Rust, Python, Go, etc.) and hybrid systems: TUI for internal power users, GUI/web for external or occasional users.