Nothing wrong with that, I just love ASCII / curses based programs. Lightweight, easy to read on the screen, responsive, run on modest H/W, even small 8 bits micro-controllers I bet....
The big problem with that paradigm is that the vintage hardware and software are really bad at things like UTF-8 encoded characters.
Why could they not display UTF8 ? If the S/W handles it, why could would it not work if the S/W is running on an old computer rather than a more modern one ?
Anyway, who cares about UTF8, it never works... in 2022 I still come across some file or some S/W or some web site that displays garbage every now and then. Character encoding will never work, just like the internet will never work, as BD said because it's just a mega huge pile of garbage layers on top of the other, loosely stitched together, and the fact that you can get any website to display is a daily miracle...
I have long given up on the concept of computing that "just works". It's just a huge pile of garbage that will never be fixed because you can never afford to break existing things for anyone... just like Intel CPU's will forever be x86 because of 40 year old compatibility....
Fixing computing is like trying to make all the countries in the world to use the same power plug/socket, same line voltage, same language, same taxes and laws.... it's just never going to happen. World will forever be a huge patchwork loosely kept together...
That said..just forget about me talking about "ASCII" apps, OK, all I meant was " Text " UI... I don't care how the text is encoded under the hood, as long as it works !
I have one question though...maybe you know, or someone.
We oppose text UI which were then replaced by graphical UI. But, were there ever any system that used, simultaneously, text AND graphics ?
A few years back I was toying, still am, with the idea, for fun and educational purposes, of designing my own little retro computer, based on a 68.000 CPU.
I of course want to go for a text UI because I like it better, and it requires little H/W resources, and simple enough (didn't say simple... only simple "enough"), that I did stand a chance of getting something to work, to some degree.... Whereas a full blown graphical UI is completely out of my reach skill-wise, and time wise as well. I mean, the goal is to do everything from scratch, so I would not be using any ready-made library / sub routines, that would defeat the purpose....
BUT... I still would want to be able to display graphics on a screen.... while still using a text UI.
I mean, I bought 10/15 years ago for one of my projects below, a graphical LCD 256x128, and the controller chip in it can handle several "layers". You can have a text layer, AND a graphical layer, super imposed on the display. So you can use the text layer to implement the user interface, and use the graphical layer when you want to display a graphical element along with the text.
So I was thinking maybe there exist a CRT controller chip that exists out there, that can do the same, that I could use in my computer project.
this way I could easily display graphical elements on th screen while still using a simple text UI. Say I want to display a picture or a graph in some techy / scientificy application S/W.
I would use the text layer to display the user interface, menus, "draw" a box outline in part of the scree using the special/extended ASCII characters, then i would "fill" the ASCII box outline using the graphical layer, to display whatever. A pic, log, a chart showing some data point, what have you.
So did any system like that exist back in the day, or was it dichotomous, either 100% text, or 100 graphical, but never both at the same time, mixed, on the same screen ??