In the desktop world, we have the option to use the command line: a uniform interface for a multitude of apps that would otherwise be very different when implemented as GUIs.
Using the same interface, I can move or edit files, cross out tasks on my to-do list, retrieve my password for my email account (using Bitwarden or pass), etc. All in the command line. The GUI for each of those are wildly different.
The other benefit is it is very easy to create a new command line app, as opposed to a GUI.
Is anything like this possible for the smartphone world (even if it doesn’t or will never exist)? What would it look like?
Since smartphone typing is much slower, we can’t simply reuse the command line. We’d need something different. An interface that can still support a various spectrum of different operations, yet ergonomic for a smartphone. What are your thoughts?
That’s more like a GUI than a CLI. You have input boxes, buttons, sliders, gestures, scrolling, drag and drop, etc, and their different combinations. Many apps do almost the same thing, except giving you a different interface and a different combination of these steps. You listed some of those variations yourself.
How is that the same as the uniformity of the text only interface? That’s far more different than differences in syntax, but still text. Two hyphens instead of one hyphen for a CLI flag is a really small difference.