Certainly command-line programs that process streams of standard input and output should always have a place in computing. On the other end, so should full GUI programs, exploiting the maximum extent of current UI technologies.
Among the many things in the middle are text-only console programs, e.g., using ncurses. Should there be special effort devoted to keep maintaining them, beyond mere user demand? I.e., do they cause a network effect, a positive externality, like the way stream-processing command line programs do?
They do seem attractive for low bandwidth, low CPU systems. Perhaps the network effect is the larger community of people possible when there is a lower technological barrier to entry.
alpine / mutt
emacs -nw / vi / vim
screen / tmux / byobu
mosh
w3m
barnowl
irssi
tin / trn
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