Comment by quectophoton

6 hours ago

A text input field for entering your command line(s), with a text log for the output, does indeed seem to be the crabs of software. Usually with some abstractions that allow you to write longer scripts[1] and just refer to them by a short name or alias, and compose those scripts together from your command prompt.

You could say it's the terminal[2] user interface.

[1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/script

[2]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/terminal

While this is very pithy, we need to acknowledge and remember that there's a gulf of difference between normal terminal interfaces and command line interfaces, and whatever the chatbots are doing.

Yes, both have a prompt where you type text to do things and get text back, but the type of text you write in one is very different than what you'd write in another. Prose versus commands and so on. Oh, and normal terminals don't waste electricity and water in amounts approaching small countries.