Terminals are scary because it feels insurmountable. What are you supposed to do? If you just type “start python program” it gives you this absurd error that doesn’t make sense. What do you mean start is not in path?

The moment you interact with an LLM it gives you feedback that you’re doing things right. It feels like a gradual climb instead of a series of abrupt jumps. People really don’t like feeling like they don’t know what they’re doing, and the terminal constantly reminds you that you are making mistakes.

> Isn't the the powerful, unlimited, unopinionated blank LLM text input waiting for your instructions eerily similar to a scary terminal?

This is why it has the title (for me currently reading "What can I help with?" but this varies a lot) and the text box itself has the placeholder text "Ask anything". Sometimes I get big friendly suggestions about what to ask it, placed on screen near that text box.

> WIMP and GUI paradigms are the exact the opposite: intentional dis-empowering, by design restrictions, enumeration of your few possible options. Those feel more constrained therefore safer.

I don't think it's constraints, per se: almost nobody looks at the font list and goes "oh no, too many options!"

Rather, GUIs are there to organise your options visually, group them in ways easy to intuitively get. There's a bit of fashion-induced rot here, e.g. I'm old enough to remember when it was always unambiguous when you were looking at a checkbox vs. a radio button, and now there's a blurry middle ground of collections of boxes with ticks in them that act mutually exclusive, but the point of a GUI from a UX POV is not the same as how software in general drifted as it got both more users and more developers and more opinionated managers and middle managers and designers who only cared about shiny rather than usability.

I am old enough to have observed non-tech workers using all kinds of text-based interfaces and it was a real pleasure seeing how old ma's would jiggle numbers on the bc-style TUI in the way that would offset any modern CompSci major.

> WIMP and GUI paradigms are the exact the opposite: intentional dis-empowering

Are you kidding? WIMP and GUI democratized computing!