Comment by zaphar

   The article shows off an strace TUI, and it's not like I can't see the benefits of making strace output more browsable. What I don't understand is why that must happen inside a terminal window where (for instance) all text must have the same font and size.

It doesn't technically have to. But if you want to do it in a different location than the terminal window and have it be cross-platform and easy to develop for your options are limited. There are not really very many text-first UI frameworks out there that are cross platform. It's similar I think to the way that the browser has become the dominant GUI platform for development. The Terminal standards are fast becoming the dominant platform for Text First Interfaces.